July 20, 2005
Press Release from Iranian
Refugees’ Alliance, Inc.
Refugees take Turkey to International Court
On June 30, 2005
the European Court of Human Rights in
Strasburg declared admissible the application of D. and Others v. Turkey (No.
24245/03). The applicants, D., his wife, S., and
their daughter, P., are Iranian nationals seeking asylum in Turkey since 1999.
They filed their application with the Court on August 4, 2003 after Turkish
authorities served them a deportation order. The order was issued upon
notification from the Ankara Office of
the United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees (UNHCR) that their refugee application had been rejected and
closed.
"We are
pleased that at last one decision-making body is putting in the effort to
examine this family’s claims diligently and transparently,” said Iranian
Refugees’ Alliance’s director, Deljou Abadi, who is representing the applicants
before the Court. “For the five long years that D., S., & P. have been
anxiously waiting for their fate to be determined by UNHCR and Turkish
authorities, they have only experienced ineptitude, rightlessness and secrecy.”
D. and S. are
from Sunni Kurdish and Shi’ite Azeri families respectively. Having been
arrested, detained and tortured previously by Iranian authorities for political
reasons, D. fled to Turkey when the authorities again suspected him of resuming
political activity. S. fled because she
was imminently facing a cruel, inhuman, and in her case life-threatening, hadd
sentence of 100 lashes. D. and S. were
both sentenced to the hadd punishment by judicial authorities a few days
after they were married by a Sunni clergy.
The court declared their marriage vows null and convicted them of
committing fornication because S’s father opposed the marriage and did not give
his consent. D.’s sentence was administered subsequently. S.’s was temporarily
postponed initially due to pregnancy and then nursing P. Despite medical evidence stating that lashing
would put S.’s life at risk because of her poor health, judicial authorities
insisted on the carrying out of the sentence. Both applicants have stacks of supporting
documents to prove their claims.
Turkey has been a major temporary asylum
country for Iranians in the last two decades. Until 1994, UNHCR was the sole
decision-maker on Iranian’s asylum applications. As Turkey has maintained a
“geographic limitation” in application of the UN 1951 Refugee Convention, not
accepting non-Europeans as refugees, those who have been recognized as refugees
have been resettled in third countries. UNHCR presently determines refugee
applications in eighty countries. Although the agency advocates and provides
comprehensive advice to governments on fair and effective systems, its own
Refugee Status Determination system (RSD) lacks essential fairness standards,
including disclosure
of reasons for rejection, meaningful and independent appeal, and transparency.
The Turkish government issued asylum
regulations in 1994 and its Ministry of Interior has since been purportedly
examining asylum applications “in parallel” with the UNHCR. Turkish authorities
assert on paper that while a decision is made by the Ministry of Interior on
the applications, UNHCR’s “opinion” is also taken into consideration, the
information contained in the applicant’s case is “mutually shared” and the
status of the applicant is “collectively debated”. However, in practice, applications are still
being examined and decided only by UNHCR. The agency periodically provides the
government with a list of names of those whose cases have been rejected and
closed and the government issues deportation orders for them. Hoping to join the European Union, the
Turkish government has proposed a plan to reform its asylum system. A January 2005 National Action Plan for
the Adoption of the EU Acquis in the Field of Asylum and Migration
indicates that UNHCR continues to be involved in case assessments for a long
time if not permanently.
In
their application, D. & S. alleged that by expelling them to Iran, the
Turkish government violates Article 3 (prohibition of torture and inhumane
treatment) of the European
Convention on Human Rights by exposing D. to political persecution, S. to
the arbitrary, cruel, inhuman, degrading and life-threatening punishment of
lashing, and by causing the permanent destruction of their family. They have also submitted that the government
has violated Article 13 (right to an effective remedy) of the Convention by not
providing them a fair asylum decision-making procedure nor an effective and accessible remedy to challenge
their deportation order. They have also argued that Turkey is in
violation of Article 14 (freedom from discrimination) of the Convention because
it implements a discriminatory asylum system whereby non-Europeans asylum
seekers’ applications are not properly investigated and they will be deported
to their country of persecution if they fail to find resettlement in a third
country.
In response, the government maintained that the
applicants’ complaints should be declared inadmissible because they have not
exhausted all domestic remedies; i.e the result of their objection to the
deportation order is still pending and a subsequent suit of nullity in Ankara
Administrative Court also is not exhausted. The government also claimed that
applicants have not been able to present a “credible” asylum claim to the
government and that “UNHCR has also reached the same decision as the
government” without producing any evidence indicating that either of the two
had actually examined the applicants’ claims.
The Court has declared all three of the applicants’
complaints admissible. Its next task is to assess the facts and arguments
submitted by the parties as well as the question of exhaustion of domestic
remedies. A judgment will follow on the applicants’ alleged violations.
“It’s horrifyingly tragic that when refugees’
protection is jeopardized by UNHCR’s RSD, there is no tribunal they can go to,”
said Abadi. “But, as a sovereign state,
the Turkish government too cannot keep claiming that it’s examining asylum
applications and then simply wait idly for UNHCR’s rejection lists. Nor can the government, as a party to the
ECHR, hide behind UNHCR’s decisions when it’s time for accountability.”
Iranian Refugees' Alliance, Inc., is a non-profit NGO in the U.S. assisting and
advocating on behalf of Iranian asylum seekers and refugees nationally and
internationally.
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Iranian Refugees' Alliance, Inc.
Cooper Station
P.O.Box 316
New York, NY 10276-0316 USA
tel/fax: 212-260-7460
email: irainc@irainc.org
url: www.irainc.org