Upper Tribunal (Immigration and asylum chamber), 2024-09-06, UI-2024-000265

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER
Case No: UI-2024-000265

First-tier Tribunal No: PA/51418/2023
LP/01878/2023

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:
On 6 September 2024

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE CANAVAN

Between

S R
(ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent


Representation:
For the Appellant: Ms A. Radford, instructed by Turpin & Miller LLP
For the Respondent: Mr N. Wain, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer

Heard at Field House on 05 March 2024

Order Regarding Anonymity

Pursuant to rule 14 of the Tribunal Procedure (Upper Tribunal) Rules 2008, the appellant is granted anonymity because the case involves a protection claim. No-one shall publish or reveal any information, including the name or address of the appellant, likely to lead members of the public to identify the appellant. Failure to comply with this order could amount to a contempt of court.


DECISION AND REASONS
1. The Upper Tribunal has been conscious of, and apologises for, the delay in promulgating this decision. The delay was in part caused by an unavoidable and fairly lengthy period of fitness absence, which was followed by a phased return to work.
2. The appellant appealed the respondent’s decision dated 14 February 2023 to refuse a protection and human rights claim.
First-tier Tribunal decision (2023)
3. First-tier Tribunal Judge Hosie (‘the judge’) dismissed the appeal in a decision sent on 11 December 2023. The judge summarised the appellant’s immigration history, including decisions made in relation to two previous appeals, on the basis of the same core claim, decided by First-Tier Tribunal Judge Greasley in May 2017 and First-tier Tribunal Judge Norris in March 2020 [6].
4. The judge acknowledged that the appellant sought to address the issues raised in the previous appeals by adducing two expert reports [7]. The first, was from Dr Biswajit Chanda, whose reports from May 2017, January 2018, and February 2020, said that he was formerly the Chairman of the Department of Law and Land Administration at the University of Rajshahi in Bangladesh and a PhD in Law candidate at SOAS, University of London. The second, was a more up to date report from Dr Ashraf-ul Hoque from March 2021. Dr Hoque’s report said that he was the Assistant Professor of Social Anthropology at University College London. In fact, I note that only Dr Hoque’s report was new evidence because the earlier reports of Dr Chanda were considered by the previous First-tier Tribunal judges.
5. The judge noted that the appellant had been resident in the UK since January 2010. In that time, he had travelled to Bangladesh several times, including for the marriage to his wife, who is from a Muslim family. In fact, she is the appellant’s first cousin. She arrived in the UK on 01 March 2023 with entry clearance as a Skilled Worker [8]-[10]. The judge heard evidence from the appellant, his wife, and his brother [17].
6. The judge began her findings by taking the previous First-tier Tribunal decisions as her starting point [20]-[27]. Two previous judges had rejected the credibility of the appellant’s claim to be at risk as an atheist. In 2017, Judge Greasley did not find the appellant’s evidence that he was atheist or that he was attacked for his writings to be credible. He found that the appellant would not be at risk if returned to Bangladesh. At that stage, the appellant had returned to Bangladesh on three occasions [21]. In 2020, Judge Norris also rejected the appellant’s claim to be an atheist. The judge did not accept that the appellant had been attacked because of his publications or that he would be at risk if returned to Bangladesh. On that occasion, the judge also noted that the appellant had not produce any evidence that was materially different to evidence that had previously been considered [22].
7. The judge in this appeal went on to consider Dr Hoque’s report in some detail, quoting a number of relevant sections [28]-[35]. Dr Hoque considered that the fact that the appellant married his wife in an Islamic ceremony was not inherently implausible. The appellant was a ‘cultural’ or ‘nominal’ Muslim and was conforming to cultural practices. Dr Hoque went on to emphasise that Bangladesh could be described as a religious society although there is a significant proportion of the population who describe themselves as agnostic, humanist and atheist. The overwhelming majority of Bangladesh’s Muslim population followed Sufism. Consequently, Bangladeshi Muslims are not only tolerant of other religions, but actively participate in non-Islamic religious festivals. The notion of apostasy is discussed in Islamic societies but its social and legal implications ‘are far from homogenous and undisputed.’ Dr Hoque went on to say that the penal code in Bangladesh does not accommodate apostasy laws per se. The appellant was unlikely to be prosecuted by the state authorities so long as he does not publicly incite communal tensions through public propagation of inflammatory ideas and...