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HCAL 202/2018
[2020] HKCFI 777
IN THE HIGH COURT OF THE
HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION
COURT OF FIRST INSTANCE
CONSTITUTIONAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE LAW LISTNo. 202 of 2018
BETWEEN
| Chowdhury Abdul Kader |
Applicant |
| and |
| Director of Immigration |
Putative Respondent |
Application for Leave to Apply for Judicial Review
NOTIFICATION of the Judge’s decision (Ord. 53 r. 3)
Following:
| |
consideration of the documents only; or |
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consideration of the documents and the Applicant being present / absent in open court; |
Order by Deputy High Court Judge Bruno Chan:
Leave to apply for judicial review refused.
Observations for the Applicant:
1. The Applicant is a 50-year-old national of Bangladesh who entered Hong Kong illegally on 22 January 2014 and was arrested by police on the same date. After he was referred to the Immigration Department for investigation, he raised a non-refoulement claim on the basis that if he returned to Bangladesh he would be harmed or killed by supporters of rival political party Awami League (“AL”). He was subsequently released on recognizance pending the determination of his claim.
2. The Applicant was born and raised in Village Shangisshor, District Comilla,Bangladesh. After leaving school he assisted his father in farming in his home village and became a supporter of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (“BNP”). In 1997 he started to work as a construction worker in various places in Bangladesh as well as in Saudi Arabia,got married and moved his family to Dhaka.
3. At around that time he started to experience the constant political clashes between supporters of AL and BNP which would very often turn violent, such as during the BNP rally held in 1996 at Comilla when a bomb blast caused numerous injuries, and while the Applicant was fleeing from the scene, he was attacked by AL supporters with bamboo sticks.
4. After the bomb incident the Applicant moved to Chittagong where he worked in construction sites, but would continue to receive threats and harassments from the local AL supporters, and on one occasion he was assaulted by some of them on the street until intervened by passers-by that he managed to escape.
5. After one of the BNP leaders was killed by another bomb blast in Chittagong, the Applicant decided to leave the country to avoid further violence by going to Saudi Arabia in 2001 to work as a construction worker until 2004 when he returned to his home town in Comilla, but soon the threats and harassments from the local AL supporters would resume,and in 2006 he moved to Dhaka and continued with his support for BNP.
6. His stay in Dhaka remained uneventful until 2013 when there was another bomb attack on BNP supporters during a rally by AL supporters resulting in numerous injuries,and while the Applicant was not hurt in that incident, he began to lose confidence in the ability of the police or the authorities to control and protect its citizens as AL was still the ruling party, and decided to leave the country again, which he eventually did on 21 January2014 when he departed for China, and from there he sneaked into Hong Kong and raised his non-refoulement claim for protection, for which he completed a Non-refoulement Claim Form on 23 November 2015 and attended screening interview before the Immigration Department with legal representation from the Duty Lawyer Service.
7. By a Notice of Decision dated 15 July 2016 the Director of Immigration (“the Director”) rejected the Applicant’s claim on all then applicable grounds including risk of torture under Part VIIC of the Immigration Ordinance, Cap 115 (“torture risk”),risk of torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment under Article 3 of the Hong Kong Bill of Rights (“HKBOR”) (“BOR 3 risk”), and risk of persecution with reference to the non-refoulement principle under Article 33 of the 1951...
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