MC (Ahmadi - IFA- sufficiency of protection)
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Miss K Eshun |
| Judgment Date | 10 June 2004 |
| Neutral Citation | [2004] UKIAT 139 |
| Date | 10 June 2004 |
| Court | Immigration Appeals Tribunal |
[2004] UKIAT 139
IMMIGRATION APPEAL TRIBUNAL
Miss K Eshun – Chairman
HH D Holden
For the Appellant: Mr R Babajee, Counsel instructed by Thompson & Co
For the Respondent: Ms R Brown, Home Office Presenting Officer
MC (Ahmadi — IFA — sufficiency of protection) Pakistan
The Appellant, a citizen of Pakistan, appeals with leave of the Tribunal against the decision of the Respondent made on 14 March 2002 refusing him leave to enter and asylum.
The Appellant left Pakistan on 15 January 2002 using a false passport and arrived in the United Kingdom on 16 January 2002 and claimed asylum immediately.
He claimed that he was an Ahmadi Muslim from Sialkot in Pakistan. He faced societal discrimination and harassment as an Ahmadi.
There was only one aspect of the Appellant's account which the Adjudicator regarded as implausible and that is the suggestion that in the two incidents in September 2001 and shortly thereafter where shots were fired, he was able to escape without being injured. The Adjudicator concluded that the allegation that shots were fired at him was an embellishment, which the Appellant had added in an effort to bolster his claim.
Apart from that, the Adjudicator accepted the Appellant as being credible. He accepted that the Appellant was an Ahmadi and was subjected to harassment. He found however, that the number of incidents with which he was involved over the period from 1993 to his departure was fairly limited. There appears to have been one incident at college when he was beaten up and he claimed that the police would take no action. In 1999 he was arrested by the police and held for three days. He was threatened by Ghulam Haide in February 2000 and was subjected to a fairly minor assault in August 2000. He was arrested in March 2001 and detained for twenty days during which time he was beaten on three or four occasions and then released on payment of a bribe. The Adjudicator accepted that during that period the Appellant continued to preach to non-Ahmadis. There were then the two further incidents, the first of which was on 1 September 2000 when the Adjudicator accepted that he had further trouble with Ghulam Haide, that he was not assaulted in either of these incidents and was able to escape to Daska where he was approached again a short time later, and that he felt he was at serious risk as a result of his continued contacts with Ghulam Haide and his associates. The Adjudicator noted that the Appellant did not report either of the last two incidents to the police and did not seek the protection of the authorities. The Adjudicator noted the Appellant's account that the only incident he reported to the police was when he was assaulted during his time at college. On the other occasions in December 1999 and in March 2001 the Appellant said that the police arrested him. However, the Adjudicator was of the view that if the Appellant had been shot at and there had been attempts to kill him as he claimed, he would have expected him to report these to the authorities.
In the light of his findings of fact, the Adjudicator found that the Appellant had a subjective fear of persecution in Pakistan for a Convention reason, namely his religion. He stated that it has long being settled that simply being an Ahmadi does not engage the Refugee Convention. The objective evidence suggests that there are a large number of Ahmadis in Pakistan and that many of them are able to live peacefully without encountering the difficulties, which the Appellant claims to have encountered.
The Adjudicator accepted that if returned to Pakistan the Appellant would continue to preach no matter how dangerous the consequences of that action may be. Counsel for the Appellant referred to the Adjudicator to the case of Iftikhar. The Adjudicator found that the Appellant in this case was in a different position from the Appellant in Iftikhar. In Iftikhar the Appellant was on a daily basis subjected to harassment and a degree of physical violence including being spat at and stones being thrown at him, and he and his family were subjected to the most appalling treatment. His house was attacked and burnt down on at least one if not two occasions. He found that the treatment to which this Appellant had been subjected was not as serious and did not think that this case could be compared with that of the Appellant in Iftikhar.
The Adjudicator then looked at whether the Appellant could relocate within Pakistan. The evidence was that...
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