IMM-792-96
BETWEEN:
SARWAN SINGH
Applicant
AND:
THE MINISTER OF CITIZENSHIP AND IMMIGRATION
Respondent
REASONS FOR ORDER
JOYAL, J.:
In this application for judicial review, involving a Sikh living in the Punjab, the Court is faced with a decision of the Refugee Board ("the Board") which found that the testimony of the applicant for refugee status was not credible or trustworthy.
Despite the Applicant's allegations of three arrests in 1994 by the police in his region, of beatings and tortures, of bribes to obtain release, of fear of both police and militant Sikhs, the former suspecting him of aiding and abetting the militants, and the latter suspecting him of being an informer, the Board nevertheless found that the Applicant had not established that there was a reasonable chance of persecution should he return to his country.
The Board went on to say that, in any event, the Applicant had an internal flight alternative and that he would not have a well-founded fear of persecution if he returned to any part of India other than the Punjab.
The Applicant claimed that if he moved to a new area, he would have to register with the police and his previous arrests in the Punjab would ultimately be disclosed. According to documentary evidence available to the Board, however, there was complete freedom of movement in India, there were no registration requirements, and generally, individual Sikhs were not pursued by police outside the Punjab. Thus, in all these circumstances, the Board concluded that it was not unreasonable for the Applicant to live anywhere in India outside of the Punjab.
The credibility of a refugee claimant and the implausibility of some of his testimony are difficult matters for a Court to determine in judicial review proceedings. On the one hand, the doctrine is clear that such matters are so much within the purview of the Board's appreciation that a Court should be loathe to intervene. On the other hand, it is incumbent upon the Board to establish a basis for a negative finding of credibility, in the absence of which its decision may be quashed.
In the course of the hearing before me of this application for judicial review, I acknowledged that some of the negative findings of the Board might have little merit. In the same line of thought, however, such errors or shortcomings might well be of little consequence if they were not of a nature to vitiate the whole of the Board's decision, or if that decision would have remained the same had there been no errors.
Whatever esoteric observations might be made on that subject, any determination of the scope of judicial review is substantially pre-empted herein by the Refugee Board's concurrent finding of an internal flight alternative. In that respect, I fail to see any reviewable error by the Board.
No doubt, counsel for the Applicant did what he could in formulating succinct and articulate arguments to support his case, just as counsel's approach on behalf of the Respondent was equally to the point. Nevertheless, I should find that any errors in the Board's appreciation of the evidence are not sufficient to justify my intervention, and that in any event, the Board's finding of an internal flight alternative is well-founded.
I must accordingly dismiss the within application for judicial review.
L-Marcel Joyal
_________________________
J U D G E
O T T A W A , Ontario
May 22, 1997.