Image of BPCA Protest – our high profile campaigns for justice seem to be having some effect!
The British Pakistani Christian Association(BPCA) is pleased to announce a successful appeal opposing a very unfair asylum decision against a persecuted Pakistan Christian.
The decision was made in late December, but we have waited to announce it because there was still a window for the Secretary of State to appeal – this window has now passed. The BPCA had been particularly concerned with this case as it was one of several where the UK Border Agency (UKBA) had rejected the application on very spurious grounds and in effect called the victim a liar.
The case involved Mr Raza, a Catholic who was persecuted and reported to the police after he responded vigorously to some anti-Christian Muslims who accosted him in his father’s shop. Given the earlier grounds of refusal that implied Mr Raza was a liar, the BPCA is particularly gratified to notice that the judge commented that he found Mr Raza to be ‘in all material respects an honest and reliable witness’.
The original rejection used as grounds for calling Mr Raza a liar the fact that he had left via a major airport when there was a First Information Report (FIR) against him and that official procedure states that an FIR means the person accused cannot leave the country. Quite correctly, the judge noted that it was quite realistic for ‘operational error (or incompetence)’ to be a factor –assuming that the airport authorities had been notified in the first place.
We hope that the UKBA takes this judgement seriously and applies it to other cases, given they have used this dubious argument to reject several other applications of persecuted Pakistani Christians.
We are also pleased that the judge rightly dismissed the ridiculous accusations of fundamental dishonesty over cultural usage of the term ‘uncle’.
We are also pleased that the judge correctly noted the hold that Islamic extremists and the police hold across the country and that therefore internal displacement was not a realistic option – again we hope that the UKBA will take serious note of this in future asylum applications, as they have a nasty habit of immediately assuming internal displacement is an adequate option for persecuted Christians.
Finally, the BPCA is pleased to note the judge took notice of our letters and reports in support of Mr Raza and mentioned the work of the BPCA several times during his decision document.
We charge a simple fee of £200 for our reports and our clients include a number of UK Solicitors. Worth every penny judging by this result and our 100% success rate with over 10 clients! The money from these reports goes towards essential operational costs for the BPCA
