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| High Court |
The High Court has denied a former Filipina domestic helper’s application to appeal the government’s rejection of her non refoulement claim, which was based on her fear of being killed or harmed by an uncle who allegedly sexually abused her when she was in high school in the Philippines.
A. Luba, 45 years old, applied for asylum at the Immigration Department after
her employment contract was terminated on Aug. 21, 2021, and she overstayed and
was arrested by police on Sept. 22, 2022.
In
a notification of Deputy High Court Judge Bruno Chan’s decision dated June 18,
Christine Chung for the Court Registrar said: “In the premises, and having
considered the decisions of both the Director and the Board with rigorous
examination and anxious scrutiny, I do not find any error of law or procedural
unfairness in either of them, nor any failure on their part to apply high
standards of fairness in their consideration and assessment of the Applicant’s
claim.”
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| PINDUTIN DITO |
Besides,
she added, Luba has withdrawn her appeal.
Immigration
denied her application for non-refoulement on the grounds that her reason did not
fall under the 1951 International Convention on the Status of Refugees, and did
not meet applicable grounds, including risk of torture, death, degrading treatment
and persecution.
She appealed to the Torture
Claims Appeal Board, which raised doubts about her reason for applying and
denied her application on June 26, 2023.
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| Basahin ang detalye! |
“… even if her
account of sexual abuses and threats from her uncle were true, there was
no reliable evidence of any real intention of her uncle to seriously harm or kill her other than just empty threats, and that in any event it was a
private and personal dispute
between just the two of them only without any official involvement,
that state or police protection would be available to the Applicant upon her return to the Philippines as well as reasonable internal relocation alternatives
for her to move safely to other
parts of the country away from her
home district without any risk of being located by her uncle,” the decision said.
Luba filed her
Form 86 for leave to apply for judicial review at the Court of First Instance, but
cited no ground for her intended
challenge.
“As such, and in the absence of any error of law or irrationality or procedural unfairness in her process before the Board or in its decision being clearly and properly identified by the Applicant, I do not find any reasonably arguable basis for her intended challenge of the Board’s decision,” the decision said.
