The man is identified only as IW in the tribunal’s recent decision, but it mentions he is a Fiji national of Indian descent, born in the mid-1950s.
He arrived in New Zealand in 2000 with a criminal record and was given a temporary visa which allowed him to stay only for a few days. He managed to remain in the country for eight years.
The man was eventually discovered by Immigration and deported in 2008.
In 2013, he bribed an official in the Fiji passport office to give him a passport in his brother’s name. He met the official in a carpark and handed over more than $2200. He received a passport two or three days later.
In 2014, IW used the passport to return to New Zealand and by 2017 had gained a residency visa, again in his brother’s name.
He used the fake passport to return to Fiji 12 times between 2014 and 2018, experiencing no problems in using it.
His wife had aided IW in his passport fraud, but when they split acrimoniously about four years ago, she dobbed him in to Immigration New Zealand.
In 2019, IW was charged with supplying false information to Immigration New Zealand about his identity, criminal history and prior removal from New Zealand.
He pleaded guilty, and in late 2019 was sentenced to a period of seven months of home detention.
The authority said IW decided to lodge his refugee claim after hearing from friends in Fiji that police officers had been asking questions about him.
“He was told that the police asked his friends if they knew when he was intending to return to Fiji and whether they knew that he had used a passport in a different name.
“The appellant is fearful that, because he obtained a passport through bribery, the police will want to interrogate him about the identity of the official he bribed,” authority member Bruce Burson said.
He said IW claimed the Fijian police routinely hit and mistreated detainees and would beat him to try to find out the corrupt official’s identity, even though he did not know it.
“The appellant is also worried that if he is detained on criminal charges relating to the obtaining and use of this passport, and the official is arrested, he will arrange for associates or relatives to harm him in prison.”
Burson said the tribunal accepted the use of violence against detainees was a “structural feature” of policing in Fiji, but the risk that IW would be subjected to physical harm was “speculative”.
Burson said that police who ill-treated detainees in Fiji were being prosecuted, and IW would have prompt access to a lawyer if he was prosecuted. This greatly reduced the risk of him being mistreated.
“Furthermore, it is not in the interest of the police, as agents of the Fijian state, to beat or otherwise mistreat persons deported from New Zealand, or making a voluntary return to avoid deportation, given the chilling effect this would have on New Zealand’s ability to lawfully deport Fijian citizens,” he said.
Burson said that none of the reports received about mistreatment arose in the context of migration, “let alone in the context of deportation from New Zealand, or any other country for that matter”.
Burson said the chance of IW being mistreated by associates of the official he bribed was “if anything, more speculative” than the chance of being ill-treated by police.
He found that IW was not entitled to be considered a refugee under the Refugee Convention. Nor was he a protected person under the Convention Against Torture, or a protected person under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Ric Stevens spent many years working for the former New Zealand Press Association news agency, including as a political reporter at Parliament, before holding senior positions at various daily newspapers. He joined NZME’s Open Justice team in 2022 and is based in Hawke’s Bay. His writing in the crime and justice sphere is informed by four years of front-line experience as a probation officer.
