SZKRK v Minister for Immigration & Citizenship [2007] FCA 1821

PLACE: SYDNEY (HEARD VIA VIDEO LINK)

REASONS FOR JUDGMENT

BACKGROUND 1 The appellant is a citizen of the People's Republic of China who applied for a Protection (Class XA) visa under the Migration Act 1958 (Cth) ('the Act'). The application was refused. The appellant applied to the Refugee Review Tribunal for a review of the refusal. The Tribunal affirmed the decision not to grant the protection visa as it was not satisfied that the appellant is a person to whom Australia has protection obligations under the Refugees Convention. 2 The appellant told the Tribunal that he had worked as a painter and had worked for a man who then invited him to join his construction team. His employer entered into a contract with the Nanchang City No. 1 Construction Engineering Corporation ('the Construction Corporation'). The appellant and other painters commenced work but were not paid. The appellant and others with him engaged in a demonstration in relation to the absence of payment. He and two others were arrested by the police and sent to a detention centre ('the Nanchang detention centre') where he said he was detained from May 2005 until March 2006 and where he said he was badly treated. The appellant was released but later detained again by authorities in Longtian. He described in his statutory declaration and before the Tribunal matters relevant to that detention, which matters were repeated in the Tribunal's reasons. 3 After the hearing the Tribunal wrote to the appellant setting out a number of items of information including a reference to independent country information ('the s 424A letter'). In the s 424A letter the Tribunal also referred to parts of the appellant's evidence to the Tribunal. The Tribunal set out why it believed that the information was relevant and why the information, if not replied to, would be detrimental to the appellant's claim. The appellant replied to the s 424A letter. 4 In its reasons the Tribunal set out the appellant's claims in some detail. It noted that it had put to the appellant at the hearing and subsequently in the s 424A letter the matters about which it had grave concerns, involving differences in the accounts given by the appellant in writing and at the hearing and what the Tribunal described as 'the far-fetched and/or coincidental nature of a number of points in the testimony'. The Tribunal did not accept that the appellant had been detained as he had described, either on the first occasion in the Nanchang detention centre or subsequently by the Longtian authorities. The Tribunal rejected the appellant's story as implausible and gave detailed reasons for that conclusion.