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| The High Court, where the Court of First Instance holds sessions |
A Filipina who sought non-refoulement protection from
deportation by Hong Kong, claiming that her step-father would harm her because
she had been asking her mother to leave him due to domestic violence and abuse,
has lost her leave for application to appeal to the Court of First Instance.
Hilda Coronel had appealed the decision of the Torture
Claims Appeal Board and the Immigration Department rejecting her
non-refoulement claim after it failed on all the applicable grounds under the
Unified Screening Mechanism (USM), such as risk to life and risk of
torture.
The Board found that the applicant was never intentionally harmed by her step-father, according to the High Court decision, written by Gladys Lee on orders of Deputy High Court Judge Michael Wong. “The applicant conceded that her step-father’s only physical contact with her during the incident in January 2020 had been purely accidental,” it said.
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“The step-father never physically harmed the applicant’s
brothers. There was no evidence that the
applicant, her mother and brothers had ever suffered any severe pain or
suffering, whether physical or mental, as a result of any ill-treatment by the
applicant’s step-father, that would be sufficient to establish any of the
applicable grounds under the US,” he decision said.
“In gist, the Board found that the applicant was never
intentionally harmed by her step-father.
The applicant conceded that her step-father’s only physical contact with
her during the incident in January 2020 had been purely accidental. The step-father never physically harmed the
applicant’s brothers,” it said.
“There was no evidence that the applicant, her mother and
brothers had ever suffered any severe pain or suffering, whether physical or
mental, as a result of any ill-treatment by the applicant’s step-father, that
would be sufficient to establish any of the applicable grounds under the USM.
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“Moreover, neither the applicant nor any of her family
members had ever reported any ill-treatment by her step-father to the police in
the Philippines and/or to any of the other authorities there,” the decision
added.
Establishing these facts was the sole function of the Board
and Immigration, and the court “finds nothing wrong or unreasonable in the way
the Board reached its conclusion,” it said.
In her appeal, Coronel “did not advance any ground for her intended judicial review,” it added.
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Instead, she used “some general grounds which were in fact used by many applicants in similar applications as their grounds for applying leave to judicially review the Board’s decisions,” it said.
“It is like a template for such applicants and they just
used the grounds stated therein without any regard to their own
situations. The applicant is no
exception,” it added.
Still, the court dealt with her assertions, such as the
Board committing precedural impropriety which she did not identify.
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| Basahin ang detalye! |
“Contrary to the applicant’s assertion, this court finds
that the Board had analyzed the applicant’s claims in detail, and had provided
full and justified reasons for rejecting the applicant’s claim for
non-refoulement protection,” it said.
The ruling added: “This court finds that none of the matters that were raised by the applicant in her supporting affidavit constitutes a valid ground to challenge the Board’s Decision.”
