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| The court will decide when the Filipina will be sent home. |
A Filipina who has just been blocked by the High Court from
reviving her failed non-refoulement claim, has found herself at the Shatin
Magistracy to face a six-year-old case for breach of condition of stay¸ and unable
to post bail to get out of detention.
Joy Clavero, 34 years old, had offered to increase her
$2,000 cash bail offer to $3,000 in a hearing last Friday, April 28, but this was rejected by Acting Principal Magistrate
Cheng Lim-chi who said the circumstances of her detention have not changed.
Instead, he granted her a bail review hearing on May 5 to
take up the bail offer again.
For Clavero, who is now barred from pursuing her non-refoulement claim without permission of the High Court in Hong Kong, the court adjournment of her criminal prosecution for overstaying her visa could only mean prolonging her stay here, likely under detention.
Clavero is charged with overstaying for two years and two months.
She arrived on March 21, 2013 as a visitor. When her two-week permission to remain
in Hong Kong expired on April 4, 2013, she stayed illegally until she
surrendered to the Immigration Department on June 24, 2015.
The Shatin court case was filed in 2017, but by then she had
raised a non-refoulement claim -- which would prevent Hong Kong from returning her
to the Philippines -- saying that if she went home, she would be harmed or
killed by her former boyfriend for ending their relationship.
Clavero’s application
was denied by the Immigration director, who ruled that her application did not
meet the requirements set by various laws, including the Immigration Ordinance.
The ruling also said that the threat posed
by her boyfriend was low, that theirs was a private personal dispute that did
not need Hong Kong’s intervention, and that the Philippines was big enough for her to go
somewhere where he could not find her.
She appealed to the Torture Claims Appeal Board, which
upheld the decision.
She then went to the High Court to try and reverse the Board’s ruling
but was denied. The court said it was not an arbiter of facts but whether the previous
rulings were fair and in accordance with the law.
In all, Clavero filed five successive appeals at the High
Court – and even reaching the Court of Final Appeal in 2021-- and each time, she
was rebuffed.
On her fifth appeal , the High Court issued a decision on March
16, 2023 that sought to stop her.
“… it is clear from the above that the Applicant’s conduct
in seeking persistently to re-litigate her non-refoulement claim without viable
grounds amounts to an abuse of process,” said Tam Kam Man, clerk to Deputy
Judge Bruno Chan, who wrote the decision for the Registrar of the High Court.
“… unless a RPO (Restrictive Proceedings Order) is made against her, of which she was unable
to answer or raise any valid objection at the hearing, I am convinced that the
Applicant will likely continue to do so and/or to make vexatious appeals,
thereby wasting further precious time and resources of the Judiciary,” Ms. Tam
added.
The RPO prohibits Clavero from from starting any new proceedings relating to any non-refoulement claim she makes at the High Court, or any appeal, including this Order, without the leave of a
Judge of the Court of First Instance.
The prohibition would last for
five years.
But under new rules approved by the government last year, anyone who is under a deportation order could be sent back home at any time, even if a case relating to her or his non-refoulement claim is still pending.
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