SZQQH v Minister for Immigration
[2012] FMCA 260
•20 March 2012
FEDERAL MAGISTRATES COURT OF AUSTRALIA
| SZQQH v MINISTER FOR IMMIGRATION & ANOR | [2012] FMCA 260 |
| MIGRATION – RRT decision – Chinese applicant claiming persecution for assisting Falun Gong practitioners – disbelieved by Tribunal – no jurisdictional error found – application dismissed. |
| Migration Act 1958 (Cth) |
| Applicant: | SZQQH |
| First Respondent: | MINISTER FOR IMMIGRATION & CITIZENSHIP |
| Second Respondent: | REFUGEE REVIEW TRIBUNAL |
| File Number: | SYG 2067 of 2011 |
| Judgment of: | Smith FM |
| Hearing date: | 20 March 2012 |
| Delivered at: | Sydney |
| Delivered on: | 20 March 2012 |
REPRESENTATION
| Counsel for the Applicant: | Applicant in person |
| Counsel for the First Respondent: | Ms L Weston |
| Solicitors for the Respondents: | Minter Ellison |
ORDERS
The application is dismissed.
The applicant must pay the first respondent’s costs in the sum of $4,200.
| FEDERAL MAGISTRATES COURT OF AUSTRALIA AT SYDNEY |
SYG 2067 of 2011
| SZQQH |
Applicant
And
| MINISTER FOR IMMIGRATION & CITIZENSHIP |
First Respondent
| REFUGEE REVIEW TRIBUNAL |
Second Respondent
REASONS FOR JUDGMENT
(revised from transcript)
The applicant arrived in Australia as a visitor by air in February 2011. On 28 March 2011 she lodged an application for a protection visa assisted by a migration agent, Jie Yu. A statement attached to the application recounted a history upon which the applicant claimed to fear persecution if she returned to her country of nationality, The People’s Republic of China.
The applicant claimed that she met a person involved in Falun Gong while she was working at a printing factory. At her request, and with the permission of her “chief”, she arranged for the printing of copies of Falun Gong material in April 1998 and following. In October 1999 she learnt that this person had been arrested, and in December 1999 the applicant was taken to a police station and interrogated and taken to a brain washing class for one week. She said: “during that time, my 5 former colleagues of [the printing company] and my chief were arrested for question in succession. And we were all fired by our factory at the end of 1999”.
The person whom she had assisted kept in touch with the applicant, and the applicant “still kept helping sister W and other Falun Gong practitioners to print their materials”. Her statement said that in November 2006 the Falun Gong person was arrested and detained with two other people and sentenced to one year and three months, and the applicant was frightened and hid. However, in January 2007 she received a summons notice from the police, and was detained for seven days.
She said that in October 2010 she went to the printing factory “to print my material”, and found that the police had taken the manager away and blocked the factory. The applicant therefore “thought somebody must have this factory reported and I would definitely be involved into”. She therefore obtained an Australian visa and came here. She subsequently was told that there was a summons notice issued addressed to her.
The applicant was interviewed by a delegate of the Minister on 10 May 2011. The delegate then made a decision on 11 May 2011, which refused the visa. The delegate identified substantial inconsistencies between the applicant’s written claims and her account of incidents of persecution recounted at interview. For that reason and other reasons, the delegate did not accept that the applicant faced a real chance of persecution in China.
The applicant appealed to the Refugee Review Tribunal, and in the course of the proceedings was represented by a different migration agent. She attended a hearing held by the Tribunal on 2 August 2011. The Tribunal then made a decision on 17 August 2011, affirming the delegate’s decision.
In her statement of reasons, the Tribunal member recounted the evidence given by the applicant, including at the hearing. This again revealed very significant inconsistencies between the applicant’s written visa statement and her previous statements to the delegate, as well as in what she said to the Tribunal in the course of the hearing. It is manifest from the Tribunal’s description of the hearing that the applicant was unable to provide a consistent account of the claimed events of persecution upon which she relied.
The Tribunal identified all of these inconsistencies in its “Findings and Reasons” in support of its conclusions that the applicant was not “a witness of truth”.
The Tribunal concluded that it did not accept that the applicant had assisted Falun Gong practitioners in China, nor that she had been detained “at all for the reasons she claims”. It did not accept any other aspects of the applicant’s claims to have come to the attention of Chinese authorities. The Tribunal was not satisfied that the authorities “had any interest in her for reasons associated with her assistance to Falun Gong”. It did not accept that there was a real chance of the applicant being persecuted if she returned to China on the basis of her refugee claims.
The applicant now asks the Court to set aside the Tribunal’s decision and to remit the matter. I have power to do this only if I am satisfied that the Tribunal’s decision is affected by jurisdictional error. I do not have power myself to decide whether the applicant should have been believed, nor whether she should be given permission to stay in Australia.
The grounds of the applicant’s application are found in her original application, and she has not filed an amended application nor any written submissions. She declined an opportunity to make oral submissions today.
The grounds set out in the application are:
1.RRT did not accept that I practiced Falun Gong in China, it is discriminated.
2.RRT thought my claims which is a fabrication without considering carefully.
3.I will be put in detention centre in China if I return back to China.
These grounds are, in my opinion, clearly without substance, and completely fail to raise any arguable jurisdictional error affecting the Tribunal’s decision.
In fact, the applicant had never claimed to have practised Falun Gong in China.
Undoubtedly, the Tribunal did consider carefully all the applicant’s evidence, before arriving at the conclusion that she had fabricated a story. Its adverse conclusion was clearly based on rational reasoning and a very firm evidentiary foundation.
The applicant’s continued assertion that she would suffer persecution is not a matter which is within my jurisdiction to decide.
Having considered all the material before me, I am not satisfied that the Tribunal’s decision was affected by any jurisdictional error. It is therefore a privative clause decision, and I must dismiss the application.
I certify that the preceding seventeen (17) paragraphs are a true copy of the reasons for judgment of Smith FM
Date: 2 April 2012
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