1729597 (Refugee)

The Administrative Appeals Tribunal considered the case of an applicant seeking protection in Australia. The applicant claimed to have fled China after hearing about an encounter between protesting neighbours and local police, but did not claim to have personally experienced harm. The Tribunal was required to determine whether the applicant qualified for protection as a refugee or on complementary protection grounds.

The central legal issues before the Tribunal were whether the applicant had a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, and whether there were substantial grounds for believing that, as a necessary and foreseeable consequence of removal from Australia, the applicant faced a real risk of suffering significant harm. The Tribunal also had to consider the applicant's responsibility to provide sufficient evidence to establish their claim.

The Tribunal reasoned that the mere assertion of fear does not establish its genuineness or that it is well-founded, nor does a claim of facing a real risk of significant harm establish such a risk. It is incumbent upon the applicant to satisfy the Tribunal of all statutory elements. In this instance, the applicant made only brief, unsupported claims about past events involving family, neighbours, and a property developer. Crucially, the applicant failed to respond to the Tribunal's invitation for a hearing to provide further information and present arguments, thereby preventing the Tribunal from testing the claims. Consequently, the Tribunal was not satisfied that the applicant had a well-founded fear of persecution or faced a real risk of significant harm.

The Tribunal affirmed the decision not to grant the applicant a protection visa, finding that the applicant did not satisfy the criteria under section 36(2) of the Migration Act 1958, including the refugee criterion and the complementary protection criterion. The Tribunal also noted that the applicant did not satisfy the criterion under section 36(2)(b) or (c) as a member of the same family unit as a person who holds a protection visa.