Belgium - Council for Alien Law Litigation, 22 March 2011, Nr. 58.368
Keywords:
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Assessment of facts and circumstances
Description
The duty of the state to carry out an individual assessment of all relevant elements of the asylum application according to the provisions of Article 4 of the Qualification Directive, including considering past persecution and credibility; and the duty of the applicant to submit as soon as possible all statements and documentation necessary to substantiate the application. |
Headnote:
Applying Art 4.4 of the Qualification Directive, the Council for Alien Law Litigation (CALL) held that the mere finding that persecution has ceased in the country of origin, without showing that there are no good reasons to consider that such persecution will not be repeated, is insufficient to reject an application for asylum.
Facts:
The applicant, of Turkish nationality and Kurdish origin, filed an application for asylum in which he claimed to have a fear of persecution by the Turkish authorities after he was wrongly accused of collaborating with the PKK. He was arrested and detained for two weeks, then given a conditional release. The Office of the Commissioner General for Refugees and Stateless Persons (CGRS) rejected his application, primarily because the available legal documents (regarding the charges against him) suggested that the applicant was no longer being prosecuted for the alleged actions. The applicant filed an appeal against this decision.
Decision & reasoning:
The CALL noted that the CGRS had not doubted that the applicant was of Kurdish origin, the fact that he came from Eastern Turkey, or the persecution of which he had been a victim (an arbitrary arrest for having aided the PKK and imprisonment for 2 weeks). The CALL quoted Art 57/7 of the Belgian Alien Law (which is a transposition of Art 4.4 of the Qualification Directive) and found that the applicant had demonstrated that he was persecuted for supposedly having aided the PKK and that the CGRS had not shown that there were good reasons to consider that such persecution would not be repeated. The CGRS’ mere finding that the applicant was no longer being prosecuted, without even referring to the Turkish legal basis for such a finding, was insufficient.
On the basis of the case file, the CALL continued, it could not be entirely excluded that the applicant would be subject to persecution again particularly given his profile, his family context and the persecutions to which it was proven he had already been subjected to.
Outcome:
The decision of the CGRS was overturned and the applicant was granted refugee status.