CCPR/C/115/D/2366/2014 substantiating his account of past experience in Bangladesh, nor has he shown that current conditions in the country raise for him personally any risk of irreparable harm. The State party recalls the Committee’s jurisprudence stating that “the risk must be personal and that there is a high threshold for providing substantial grounds to establish that a real risk of irreparable harm exists”.10 A “real risk” means that the risk must be “the necessary and foreseeable consequence of the deportation” and there must be evidence to support this conclusion. 11 The State party considers that the author has not met his burden of establishing that he would personally face a foreseeable risk of irreparable harm if returned to Bangladesh based on his past work as a journalist, whether such an alleged threat emanates, as the author asserts, from thugs associated with the ruling political party or from police in Dhaka. To the extent that he asserts any fears based on his being a Bangladesh National Party supporter, neither his claims before the domestic authorities nor his communication ever focused on his political affiliation or his role as a human rights defender; his claims are based exclusively on assertions that he faces irreparable harm due to his newspaper reporting and work as a journalist. In this regard, although he had worked as a journalist since 1997, he alleges that he received threats only in 2011, in response to a controversial article he co-authored. He does not allege to have been harassed or threatened throughout his career. Nothing in the material he submitted to the Committee tends to suggest that he stands out in any way from other journalists in Bangladesh. 4.7 The State party further submits that several objective elements undermine the credibility of the author’s allegation that he received threats in the summer of 2011 because of his work as a journalist. For example, as the State party’s immigration authorities noted during the course of the proceedings involving him, the discrepancies in the author’s recollection of his experiences are rather unusual for an experienced journalist. As another example, it is suspect that the other journalist who co-authored the newspaper article at the centre of the alleged threats never indicated that he faced similar threats or visits from thugs or police until after the Canadian Refugee Protection Division determined that the author’s story was not credible in that regard; only then did the author file A’s letter purportedly corroborating his account. The State party considers that this seriously calls into question the probative weight of this evidence and that none of the documents submitted by the author provides reliable substantiation for his allegations. The State party maintains that the letter from the Crime Reporters Association of Bangladesh dated 27 February 2014 lacks specific details concerning any abuse the author may have experienced in the past and is entirely speculative concerning any risks he might face if returned to Bangladesh. There is no explanation as to why the author stands out from among journalists in Bangladesh such that it is credible and reasonable to think that he is personally at risk of the stated dangers more than three years after one locally focused newspaper article. 4.8 The State party considers that an additional factor undermining the credibility of the author’s allegations is the absence of any explanation as to why the allegedly offending newspaper article he co-authored, along with the media report of the threats he allegedly received, refer to a journalist with another name. In the absence of any explanation by the author, it is open to question why he would have published in The Daily Kaler Kantho under an alias [Y] when the press pass establishing his credentials as senior reporter refer to him as X. It is equally plausible that these newspaper articles refer to another journalist altogether, and not the author. Indeed, while the State party does not dispute that the author 10 11 The State party cites communication No. 2007/2010, X v. Denmark, Views adopted on 26 March 2014, para. 9.2 (emphasis added by the State party; internal citations omitted). The State party cites, inter alia, communication No. 692/1996, A.R.J. v. Australia, Views adopted on 28 July 1997, paras. 6.11-6.13; communication No. 706/1996, G.T. v. Australia, Views adopted on 4 November 1997, paras. 8.1-8.2. 9