CAT/C/40/D/311/2007
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would be at risk of torture. It endorses the grounds adduced by the Asylum Review Board
(CRA) and the Federal Office for the Refugees (ODR) substantiating their decisions to reject
the complainant's application for asylum and to confirm his expulsion. It also recalls that the
existence of a consistent pattern of gross, flagrant or mass violations of human rights does not
constitute sufficient reason for concluding that a particular individual is likely to be subjected
to torture on return to his or her country, and that additional grounds must therefore exist
before the likelihood of torture can be deemed to be, for the purposes of article 3, paragraph
1, "foreseeable, real and personal".
4.5 With reference to the Committee’s General Comment, the State party contends that the
situation in Belarus cannot, per se, constitute a sufficient ground to conclude that the
complainant would be at risk of torture. The complainant failed to provide sufficient elements
to conclude that he would be exposed to a “foreseeable, real and personal” risk of torture in
Belarus. As to the situation in Ukraine, the State party notes that important political changes
have occurred after the events invoked by the complainant when claiming that he could face a
risk of torture there. The nature of the changes in question is such that the Swiss Federal
Council has since qualified Ukraine as “a safe country”, for purposes of the Swiss Law on
asylum.
4.6 The State party contends that the complainant admitted that in Belarus he had been
sentenced to fines on three or four occasions in connection with his political activities. In
addition, he claimed that his company’s implication in political activities had attracted the
attention of the fiscal authorities. The State party notes, however, that the complainant never
made any allusion to acts of ill-treatment inflicted on him by Belarus authorities. No such
allegations were presented in the complainant’s initial submission to the Committee.
4.7 It was only in his submissions of 19 and 25 January 2007, when he affirmed that while
detained in Vitebsk, he suffered from degrading and inhuman treatment, without supplying
any proof in this regard. At the same time, the fax which according to the complainant
confirms his detention in 1999 - 2000, submitted as an annex to the complainant’s
communication of 19 January 2007, is dated 12 April 2000, but was never submitted to Swiss
asylum authorities. The above elements lead the State party to conclude that the
complainant’s allegations are not credible in respect of his detention and ill-treatment in
Belarus.
4.8 The State party further notes that in his asylum claim, the complainant alleged that he
was arrested by police in Ukraine when acting as an electoral observer and was detained and
ill-treated there from 31 March to 2 April 2002. The State party notes that even if throughout
the asylum proceedings, the complainant had stressed the level of gravity of the ill-treatment
suffered in Ukraine, it accepts the veracity of his allegations. The ill- treatment was inflicted
on the complainant allegedly because he had refused to sign a detention protocol. Thus,
according to the State party, the police action constitutes an abuse (of power). But the “real”
grounds for the complainant’s detention would not result in any risk of the complainant’s
prosecution on return, let alone acts of torture. According to the State party, these police
abuses constitute isolated acts and do not show any systematic persecution of the complainant
by the police because of his political activities.
4.9 As to the complainant’s political activity in Belarus, the State party notes that in his
asylum application, the complainant declared that he had been politically active in Belarus