Asylum seekers Australia: Excuses given to get refuge status

These are some of the bizarre excuses asylum seekers are now using to desperately secure resettlement in Australia.

Sorcery, sexuality and loan sharks are some of the excuses for asylum seekers to stay in Australia, with gender and LGBTI discrimination used to grant refuge this year.

A student from PNG sought refugee status on the grounds he is the “grandson of an accused sorcerer’’, claiming vengeful tribesmen would try to kill him for inheriting the magical powers.

He told the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) his grandfather was “blamed for the sorcery death of an old man in the village’’.

“(The man) claims that after his grandfather died, people from other tribes believed that his sorcery practices were passed (to him),’’ the recent decision by AAT member Michael Hawkins states.

“(He) claims that if he returns to PNG, he will be a target and be killed.’’

The man told the AAT his grandfather had been “thrown off a cliff’’.

A student from PNG sought refugee status on the grounds he is the “grandson of an accused sorcerer’’.

The Home Affairs Department rejected the refugee application after cancelling the man’s student visa in 2017.

The man, who is now in immigration detention, was picked up for drink driving and unlicensed driving in 2018, and jailed for domestic violence a year later.

The AAT upheld the deportation order, stating that it “does not accept that the applicant was accused of sorcery by an opposing tribe or anyone’’ and did not have a well-founded fear of persecution for any reason.

Two sisters from Zimbabwe were granted refugee status after the AAT ruled they would be persecuted as “women who support and sympathise with LGBTI persons’’, overturning a Home Affairs Department rejection of their asylum claim.

One sister told the tribunal that she had flown to Australia to attend a wedding in 2016 and could not go home to Zimbabwe because her brother, who lives in Australia, had just “come out’’ as a homosexual.

She claimed this would risk the safety of family members and subject her and her two children to “shame and ridicule’’.

She told Home Affairs that “she would not be safe as it is known that she is related to a homosexual person’’.

“She claims that she will be shunned by her family, her church, and community and could be arrested by ‘state security agents’,’’ Sydney-based AAT member Tania Flood stated in her decision.

“She claims that people will talk behind their backs and they will be excluded from society’’.

Some countries persecute homosexuals and the people that support them. Picture: Getty Images

Ms Flood ruled Australia has “protection obligations’’ towards the sisters, due to Zimbabwe’s “long-standing traditional attitudes and values (that) perpetuate a culture of discrimination and violence against women’’.

A gay Indian woman also won an AAT appeal against the department’s rejection of her refugee claim.

The AAT found the woman may be forced into a heterosexual marriage or murdered in an “honour killing’’ if she returns to India.

“She does not want to be forced to marry a man,’’ AAT member Denise Connolly ruled in a decision published this year.

“The Tribunal accepts she faces a real risk of assault, physical or sexual abuse and/or other manifestations of homophobia in India and that this would amount to significant harm for the purposes of the (Migration) Act.’’

The AAT also granted asylum to a Christian Egyptian woman whose dog was shot by Muslim men, who demanded that she convert to Islam.

The woman told the AAT that one of the men told her, ‘If you don’t put a hijab on and become a Muslim, we’ll do the same thing to you’’.

Senator Pauline Hanson. Picture: Getty Images

AAT member Damian Creedon described the asylum-seeker, who previously lived in Australia but moved back to Egypt, as a “strong-willed and outspoken woman’’ and there was a “real chance that (she) will face serious harm in Egypt’’.

A Chinese man who tried to stay in Australia to avoid “loan sharks’’ in his home country lost his refugee claim.

The man sought asylum after flying to Australia on a holiday visa in 2019, claiming that he could not return to China as he would be “harassed, assaulted, tortured or killed by a “loan shark’’ after failing to pay back a business loan.

AAT member Peter Haag ruled that he was not satisfied the man had borrowed money from a loan shark, and his fear of harm did not fall under the refugee rules of having a well-founded fear.

News Corp Australia yesterday revealed the AAT overturned dozens of deportation orders for violent gangsters, drug-runners and domestic violence thugs this year, triggering a federal government migration review and a blast from One Nation Senator Pauline Hanson who declared that some “out of touch” tribunal members “live in a bubble’’.

Originally published as Asylum seekers Australia: Excuses given to get refuge status