Immigration Authorities reject asylum seeker's claims as implausible

Immigration authorities questioned a Bangladeshi man's reasons for wanting refugee status, including that Islamic extremists phoned him at an airport forewarning him they wanted him dead. Photo / 123RF

An asylum seeker's claims the family of a murdered friend, Islamic extremists, and a vengeful drug dealer, are all out to get him in his home country, have been rejected by New Zealand authorities.

The Bangladeshi man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was unsuccessful in his appeal against an earlier decision declining to grant him refugee status.

In a recently-released decision of the Immigration and Protection Tribunal, committee member Bruce Burson said he was mindful situations that seem far-fetched from a New Zealand perspective could still be all too real in a claimant's own country.

But in this case, the evidence was implausible.

Now aged in his late 30s, the claimant said his problems in Bangladesh began one night in 2008 when he witnessed a group fatally attack one of his friends.

The claimant said he ended up a suspect, was deprived of a lawyer, interrogated and tortured for 10 days with electric shocks and cigarettes being stubbed out on him.

He believed his predicament was the doing of his friend's father – a wealthy businessman.

The claimant said he was refused bail and kept in custody for another four months. It was another two years before charges against him were dropped.

In 2011 he went to the UK to study but returned to Bangladesh twice that year as a witness in the trials of the people ultimately charged with his friend's murder.

Although he could not positively identify them, they were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment – a sentence he said angered the dead man's family who had wanted to see the death penalty imposed.

He returned permanently to Bangladesh in 2017, spending his weekends helping at a Christian pastor friend's church school, teaching about the dangers of human trafficking.

The claimant said a number of things happened in early 2019 to endanger him: He became involved in trying to curb drug dealing in his city and as a result of his actions, a childhood friend was jailed for six years; he intervened in an assault on two gay men, and his dead friend's brother - a leader of a youth branch of the ruling Awami League who had been jailed in 2009 - was released and was apparently looking for him.

The man said he received a threatening phone call on February 14, 2019, from an unknown person who accused him of being an atheist or a Christian convert being paid to convert Muslims to Christianity.

On February 25, 2019, he and his mother applied for a New Zealand visitor visa, which was issued on May 4, but due to the Christchurch terror attacks, they decided to go to the UK instead.

They returned to Bangladesh three weeks later and while waiting to clear customs, he received another threatening call. It terrified him so much that his pastor friend and father arranged tickets for his immediate travel to Australia and New Zealand.

Assessing the application, Burson said the claimant's evidence lacked credibility. Supporting evidence from his father and pastor friend was mobile, inconsistent, and sounded like it was being made up as they went along.

Booking dates and travel documents suggested the man had already planned to travel for unremarkable reasons - not the persecutory ones he claimed.

"There is no doubt in the Tribunal's mind that the appellant and his witnesses have poorly attempted to weave an untrue narrative around his otherwise unremarkable purchase of flights to and from the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand.

Burson said that the evidence was "designed to give persecutory colour to" the man's travel movements that were "planned for reasons wholly unconnected to any risk of harm to him from any source whatsoever".

The claimant described feeling equally at risk from both threatening calls he received yet was unable to convincingly explain why he chose to lodge a refugee claim in New Zealand and not one in the UK where he went after the first call and where he had already previously lived for a number of years.

The actions he described Islamic extremists taking against him were implausible. If they wanted him dead, they would not have phoned to forewarn him and not when he could readily get on a flight and leave the country.

The claimant gave no credible reason why his dead friend's family would hold animosity towards him. His evidence had no bearing on the sentence. His claim of animosity was negated by his father's evidence to the Tribunal - that the dead man's family had accepted the court's decision is final and took no issue with the sentence.