Federal Court Decisions

     IMM-2583-96

BETWEEN:

     SEBASTIAN MILROYVAZ,

     Applicant,

     - and -

     THE MINISTER OF CITIZENSHIP AND IMMIGRATION,

     Respondent.

     REASONS FOR ORDER

RICHARD J.:

         The applicant seeks to set aside a decision of the Immigration and Refugee Board (the "Board") dated June 18, 1996, wherein it determined that the applicant is not a Convention Refugee.

         The Board concluded that the applicant did not establish a well-founded fear of persecution in Shri Lanka and in any event, he had an IFA in Colombo.

         The applicant claimed that he was persecuted by the LTTE in the North. The Board's finding was based on its adverse finding of credibility. It made two findings of implausibility in the applicant's story.

         The major finding concerns the circumstances in which the applicant claims he was released by the LTTE after being branded by the Tigers as a traitor. He claimed he was arrested by the LTTE on July 19, 1995, beaten repeatedly, branded as a traitor and told he was going to be killed and his body dumped elsewhere. He was then transferred to another camp to cut wood and transport timber. On August 9, 1995, he was released when his uncle and his wife intervened on his behalf and promised the LTTE that he would report back for arms training. According to the applicant, this caused him to flee the North for Colombo.

         The Board found it implausible that, if the applicant's story about his arrest, mistreatment, and being branded a traitor by the Tigers were true, the Tigers would release him, solely on the verbal promise of his uncle and wife that he would report back to undergo arms training. Credible documentary evidence shows that the LTTE are a ruthless guerilla group who brutally punish those whom they view as traitors to their cause.

         The second finding concerns letters he claimed to have written to his parents. He testified that during the same detention by the Tigers, he was told that the LTTE had intercepted his letters to his parents in which he intimated he was being threatened by the LTTE.

         The Board found that the applicant's testimony with regard to such letters being written, and subsequently intercepted by the Tigers, to be lacking in trustworthiness, and therefore, not credible. The Board found it implausible that, not knowing if his parents were still alive or where they might be situated, the applicant would take such a great risk of mentioning in the alleged letters, that he was constantly being threatened by the LTTE. The LTTE's brutality was not unknown to the applicant. His written testimony details his knowledge of, and his personal experiences with, the Tigers' ruthlessness. The Board, therefore, did not believe that the Tigers intercepted any letters that the claimant had written to his parents.

         Given the above, the Board determined that, contrary to the applicant's testimony, he was not arrested by the LTTE on July 19, 1995, threatened and beaten in the days that followed, then released without incident on August 9, 1995.

         The Board did accept as credible his testimony that, prior to July 1995, he had been used by the LTTE to attend to injured guerillas, dig bunkers, cut wood and transport timber. The Board found that those activities did not constitute past persecution at the hands of the Tigers or give rise to a well-founded fear of persecution if he were to return to the North.

         It is well established that the Board is a specialized tribunal that has jurisdiction to draw inferences and to gauge credibility. Accordingly, the Court will not intervene unless the Board's inferences are so unreasonable as to warrant intervention. The burden rests on the applicant to show that the inferences drawn by the Board could not reasonably have been drawn.¹

         The applicant has not succeeded in persuading the Court that the Board acted unreasonably in finding that the applicant's account of the central incident alleged in support of his claim was implausible. If that central incident is disbelieved, as clearly it was, the other alleged errors of the Board are of no consequence.²

         The application for judicial review is dismissed.

     __________________________

     Judge

Ottawa, Ontario

May 12, 1997

__________________

¹      Aguebor v. M.E.I. (1993), 160 N.R. 315.

²      See: Yang v. M.E.I. (1995) Court No. A-185-92.