CCPR/C/127/D/2484/2014
the Government, the military and the police, as well as associated military groups. He
claims that he would be targeted because of his previous employment as a field worker with
a non-governmental organization, the Sewalanka Foundation, which provided assistance to
Tamils displaced during the civil war. The author himself is a Tamil male from the north of
Sri Lanka and would be identified as a failed refugee claimant. The author claims that he
was threated several times by governmental soldiers in the period 2011–2013.
4.2
The State party’s authorities have determined that if the author is deported to Sri
Lanka, he would face no risk of persecution, no risk of torture, no risk to life, nor a risk of
cruel and unusual treatment or punishment. The State party authorities found that some of
the author’s statements were not credible and that he was able to avoid threats by changing
work assignments and location. On the basis of objective country reports, the State party
authorities have concluded that the author’s profile would not place him at risk, even if he
was identified as a former field worker for an NGO and as a failed refugee claimant.
4.3
The State party notes the author’s claims that in 2001 he started working for an
NGO assisting Tamils who had been displaced. In August 2011, he was threatened by
governmental soldiers after he had refused to comply with their demand to give them
assistance by transporting them in his NGO vehicle. After explaining this to his supervisor,
he was transferred to another location. In March 2013, after the author began collecting
information about sexual assaults against women in police detention, he received death
threats from the police asking him to stop. In August 2013, he left Sri Lanka with the help
of an agent.
4.4
The author’s claim for protection was heard by the Refugee Protection Division of
the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada on 8 July 2014. At the hearing, the author
was represented by legal counsel and had the right to adduce evidence and make
submissions. The author gave an oral testimony and provided identity documents and
reports on conditions in Sri Lanka. The Division is an independent, quasi-judicial
specialized tribunal that considers applications for protection based on fears of persecution,
torture or certain similarly serious violations of their human rights if they were to be
removed to their country of origin. The Division determines whether a person is a refugee,
or whether he or she is in need of protection for the purposes of section 97 of the
Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. It conducts oral hearings in an informal and nonadversarial manner.
4.5
In its decision dated 8 August 2014, the Refugee Protection Division found that the
author had failed to adequately explain his choice to include in his written testimony the
allegation raised at the hearing that a colleague had also been threatened in March 2013.
That allegation had not been repeated before the Committee. The author had also failed to
adequately explain that he had omitted the allegation that he believed two police officers
had followed him everywhere he went before his departure from Sri Lanka and this
allegation had also not been raised before the Committee. The Division highlighted the
author’s testimony that he had left the United States, despite the expectation that he would
have been granted refugee status if he had remained there. After receiving threats in 2011,
the author was able to move to another work location and did not receive any further threats
until March 2013. The March 2013 threats stopped after the author completed his work on
collecting information about sexual assaults in detention. After June 2013, the author was
moved to an office job in Vavuniya and the threats stopped. The author was never
threatened at his home in Sri Lanka.
4.6
The Refugee Protection Division further rejected the author’s claim that he was at
continuing risk because two people had visited his former residence in Sri Lanka in April
2014 and asked his wife about his whereabouts. The Division found that the author had not
adduced enough evidence to show that these people were police officers or whether they
posed any threat. Furthermore, it found that the author’s past work with the Sewalanka
Foundation was not of a kind that would expose him to the risks described in the documents
concerning conditions in Sri Lanka. The documents concerning the killing of aid workers
during the armed conflict in 2006 and 2007 do not show that aid workers are still at risk.
More recent reports, for example, do not describe such workers being targeted. Instead, the
reports describe past allegations of threats against particular types of NGO workers,
especially those who were actively critical of the Government. The author also seems to
accept that the Sewalanka Foundation is not critical of the Government, arguing instead that
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