British citizen of Gurkha descent threatens legal action against British government for ‘state-sponsored discrimination’ against him as he applies to renew his passport

Hong Kong resident Tsewang Bhotia, 43, says he has been asked to submit 13 additional documents to get a new passport

Bhotia, son of a former officer in the British Army, says he may take a class action if there are sufficient numbers of other Gurkhas affected

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Tsewang Bhotia, a British citizen in Hong Kong whose father was a Gurkha officer, complained that the British government was discriminating against him in his British passport renewal. He has asked me to submit a bunch of documents and he found that unreasonable and humiliating. Photo: Dickson Lee

Published: 7:44pm, 26 Dec 2018Updated: 1:09am, 27 Dec 2018

A British citizen of Gurkha descent in Hong Kong is threatening to take the British government to court over the “state-sponsored discrimination” he is undergoing in his passport renewal application, saying he felt humiliated by the “nonsense”.

Tsewang Bhotia, 43, director of a headhunting firm, applied to have his passport renewed last month, expecting the process to take three to four weeks.

His nightmare started when the Passport Office wrote to him and requested that he submit 13 additional documents, which he described as “nonsense”.

Among the documents requested were his school records dating as far back as possible; his family tree dating back to his grandparents; photos of himself with his parents since birth; his father’s British Army Service book; and his father’s Army camp letter given when he was discharged from service.

“I was stunned. When I was looking at this [list], I was like, what is this?” he said. “I will be looking at legal action”.

He said he has not decided whether to take an individual legal action or a class action – to gather more people in similar ordeals to sue the British authorities together.