Asylum seekers choose HK for good reason
In 'Alarm over court finding' (February 25), which is about the High Court's recent refusal of six asylum seekers' applications for judicial review, Phil C. W. Chan rightly observed that Mr Justice Michael Hartmann's ruling was not entirely clear whether the court in Hong Kong considered non-refoulement a rule of customary international law. But he overlooked the real cause of alarm.
According to a leading law journal, which Mr Justice Hartmann referred to in his ruling, non-refoulement is 'customary law in Western Europe, the American continent, and Africa - but not in Asia'.
Five of the applicants were from Africa and one from Sri Lanka. They are representative of an increasing number of similar claims, which currently total about 2,000. These asylum seekers came to Hong Kong and not somewhere much nearer home in Europe or North America where non-refoulement is unequivocally a rule of law. Why?
Countries which trumpet the high-sounding principle of non-refoulement invariably practise restrictive immigration policies that effectively deny the entry of visitors from regions beleaguered by political prosecutions.
These countries vainly embrace non-refoulement as an international law where there is hardly any domestic case to apply it.
The real cause of alarm lies at a previous Court of Final Appeal's declaratory ruling which holds that 'where UNHCR rejects the claim for refugee status, the secretary for security must conduct a proper independent assessment of the torture claim', and to give sufficient reasons so that rejected claimants could consider an application for administrative and judicial review. It also provides detailed administrative guidelines for the required assessment. As a result of this ruling, a great many refugee claimants make claims under the Convention Against Torture.
