Case summaries
The fact that many Uighurs who have returned to China have been detained in “re-education camps”, or have otherwise faced the risk of imprisonment and ill-treatment, combined with the applicants’ individual circumstances, establishes substantial grounds to believe that the applicants would be at real risk of arbitrary detention, and inhuman treatment, or even death, if they were removed to their country of origin.
If implemented, the applicants’ removal to China would be in breach of Articles 2 and 3 of the ECHR.
Residence permits obtained in the context of family reunification and long-term resident status, under Directives 2003/86 and 2003/109, may be withdrawn if they were issued on the basis of falsified documents, even if the holders were unaware of the fraud committed.
The applicant, a Chinese citizen, feared, if she returned to China, she would be persecuted and exposed to torture by the Chinese Communist Government due to her Falun Gong activities.
The Refugee Appeals Board did not find that she was a particular profiled member of Falun Gong or that she was wanted by the Chinese Authorities as she left China legally notwithstanding that she had been detained several times for shorter periods and imprisoned for seven years during which she was exposed to torture. However, the Board found that the Chinese Authorities were aware of the applicant ‘s political positions regarding Falun Gong and the human rights situation in China due to comprehensive media activities and participation in demonstrations in Copenhagen. Therefore, after an overall assessment including the fact that the applicant had been imprisoned for seven years, the Board granted the applicant reugee status under the Danish Aliens Act Art. 7 (1).
The applicant arrived in Hungary as a child and her affiliation with Falun Gong was not properly adjudicated by the asylum authority (OIN) but her asylum application made as an adult was considered a subsequent one. Relying on Article 5 (3) of the Recast Qualification Directive, the OIN considered that the applicant and her mother were malevolent when joining Falun gong solely to evoke their sur place status. The court ruled that the OIN failed to individually assess the applicant’s claim and quashed the decision.
This case related to two third country nationals who were ordered to leave the Netherlands, without being granted a period for voluntary departure, on the basis that they constituted a risk to public policy.
The CJEU gave guidance on the meaning of Article 7(4) of the Returns Directive, stating that the concept of a ‘risk to public policy’ should be interpreted strictly with an individualised assessment of the personal conduct of the person. Suspicion or conviction for a criminal offence was a relevant consideration. However, it was unnecessary to conduct a new assessment solely relating to the period for voluntary departure where the person had already been found to constitute a risk to public policy.
The case examined the allegations of the applicants that their detention conditions in Greek detention centres were contrary to Article 3 due to overpopulation and poor hygiene conditions. It further examined their complaint under Article 5 para 4 that the administrative tribunal in Greece, which should have examined the legality of their detention did not, in fact, adequately do so.
The Constitutional Court presents its opinion on the nature of the rights and principles contained in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union(CFRU) and on jurisdiction for the decision on questions of interpretation in connection with the CFRU. It gave an answer in the affirmative to the question of whether the CFRU, in particular Article 47 CFRU, is applicable in asylum proceedings if no such violation was found in the actual case at hand.
Tibetans in China are not at risk of “group persecution” based on their ethnicity. However, individual acts of persecution (the rape of a Tibetan woman by security forces in the present case) do constitute past persecution since they have to be regarded as being connected to the persecution ground “race”.
The third paragraph of Article 22 of the International Protection Act (ZMZ) which states that the competent authority does not need to take into account the country of origin information in the event the applicant is found to be not credible, is unconstitutional.
The credibilityassessment must always be the result of a comprehensive assessment of the applicant's statements and conduct before and during the procedure for obtaining international protection.
A mother of two children was recognised as a refugee as there was sufficient probability of her being forced to undergo sterilisation in China due to violation of the one child policy. Forced sterilisation constitutes a violation of the basic human right to physical integrity and human dignity to such an extent that it is without doubt relevant under Section 60 (1) of the Residence Act. / Art 1 A 2 of the 1951 Refugee Convention.