1616870 (Refugee)

The applicants sought protection visas, claiming they feared persecution in China due to their Roman Catholic faith. The first applicant asserted membership in an underground Catholic Church, engaging in clandestine religious activities and evangelism, and alleged that her family had faced penalties and arrests for their religious practices. The second applicant claimed to have converted to Catholicism in China and subsequently in Australia, also expressing a commitment to spreading the gospel and a refusal to participate in the state-sanctioned Patriotic Church. The Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) reviewed these claims and the evidence presented.

The central legal issues before the Tribunal were whether the applicants met the criteria for a protection visa under either the refugee criterion (s.36(2)(a) of the *Migration Act 1958* (Cth)) or the complementary protection criterion (s.36(2)(aa) of the *Migration Act 1958* (Cth)). This required the Tribunal to assess the credibility of the applicants' claims regarding their religious activities in China, their fear of persecution, and the likelihood of suffering significant harm upon return to China. The Tribunal was also required to consider relevant country information and policy guidelines.

The Tribunal's reasoning focused on a detailed assessment of the applicants' credibility, finding numerous inconsistencies and implausibilities in their evidence. The Tribunal doubted the existence of the first applicant's claimed membership in an underground church, noting that her baptism certificate and church descriptions were more consistent with official Catholic institutions. It also found implausible her claims of converting classmates and evangelising in Australia, as well as her accounts of sending religious material to China via the internet and her family's alleged persecution. Similarly, the Tribunal found significant inconsistencies in the second applicant's evidence regarding his religious conversion, his reasons for coming to Australia, and his timeline of religious activities. The Tribunal concluded that the applicants had fabricated material claims to obtain protection visas and were opportunistic, rather than genuinely fearing persecution.

Consequently, the Tribunal affirmed the decision not to grant the applicants protection visas. It found that the applicants did not have a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of religion and were not refugees under the Act. Furthermore, the Tribunal was not satisfied that there was a real risk of significant harm, as defined by the Act, if they were removed from Australia to China. Therefore, the applicants failed to satisfy the criteria for protection obligations under both the refugee and complementary protection provisions.