SZRRW v Minister for Immigration and Citizenship

BACKGROUND 1 The appellant in this matter claimed to be a citizen of China who arrived in Australia on 2 August 2011. He apparently came to this country on a tourist visa. He applied for a protection visa on 24 October 2011. On 17 February 2012 a delegate of the Minister refused to grant the appellant the protection visa. This occurred in circumstances where, as it would appear from the reasons for decision of the Refugee Review Tribunal (the Tribunal), the appellant failed to attend his scheduled interview and also failed to make contact with the department explaining why he was unable to attend. 2 In submissions made to me today, the appellant asserted that he never received notice of that interview. In one sense, that may be beside the point, because the appellant subsequently applied for review of the delegate's decision to the Tribunal. The Tribunal affirmed the decision of the delegate not to grant a protection visa in circumstances which I will shortly describe. 3 By letter dated 11 May 2012, the Tribunal invited the appellant to attend a hearing in Sydney on 29 May 2012. On 11 May 2012, the Tribunal received a response to that invitation by facsimile indicating that the appellant would attend the hearing. 4 The day before the scheduled hearing the appellant sent a facsimile to the Tribunal indicating that he was in Perth and unable to attend the hearing, and asking for the case to be transferred to Perth or for videoconference facilities to be made available. In response, the Tribunal sent another invitation to the appellant to attend a hearing, this time scheduled for 3 July 2012 to take place by videolink. The day before that hearing was to take place, the appellant sent a facsimile to the Tribunal stating that he had returned to Sydney and would attend the hearing in person. 5 The Tribunal hearing took place on 3 July 2012. Contrary to what the appellant foreshadowed in the facsimile he sent to the Tribunal the previous day, he did not attend the hearing. It is apparent that the Tribunal had, in the absence of the appellant, very little information upon which to assess his claims. According to the Tribunal, the appellant claimed that he had reported corrupt practices at his work place, which was a hotel in which a local government official had a shareholding. The appellant claimed that the corruption involved this official and the appellant's boss. He claimed that he reported the corruption to government officials in October 2010, and that no action was taken in relation to his report, but that his boss was informed and that he was subsequently beaten up and threatened. 6 The appellant claimed that he took his complaint to the provincial government in January 2011 and that in the following month he was detained by police for 15 days. After his release, he claimed his former boss sent people to harass him, and that while in China he lived under the threat of such harassment. He claimed that he wanted to quit his job but that government officials could find him wherever he went. 7 In circumstances where there was very little evidence before the Tribunal and the appellant failed to appear at the hearing, the Tribunal was, perhaps unsurprisingly, not satisfied that he had a well-founded fear of persecution if he were to return to China now or in the foreseeable future: see NAVX v Minister for Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs [2004] FCAFC 287 at [5]; NAST v Minister for Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs [2004] FCAFC 208 at [5]. The Tribunal found that the evidence before it did not suggest, and the Tribunal was not satisfied, that the appellant would be subjected to mistreatment amounting to persecution because of his past actions in exposing corruption. The Tribunal was satisfied that the appellant was not a person to whom Australia owed protection obligations under the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees 1951.