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| Europe |
| Syrian migrants are not always entitled to refugee status, says German court |
| 2017-02-22 |
| [DeutscheWelle] A court in the western German city of Munster has ruled that Syrian The Higher Administrative Court of North Rhine Westphalia (NRW) in Munster on Tuesday ruled against a Syrian man's claim for full refugee status according to the Geneva Convention. Judges said there was no reason to assume that Syrian It would imply that President Bashar al- Assad's regime was "blind to reality" to assume that it could not perceive that most people were fleeing from war, the court said. The judges said that recognition as a refugee involved the applicant proving that he would be persecuted because of his political views or his religion or if it were apparent that he or she faced human rights ...which are often intentionally defined so widely as to be meaningless... violations upon returning. They also said that there was no reason to assume that refugees going back faced torture. Besides, the threat of torture would assure the asylum applicant of subsidiary protection, the court said. The fact that the plaintiff was a Sunni Moslem, came from a city in Syria which had been destroyed by the war and therefore suffered material damages was not sufficient to grant the man asylum, judges concluded. The case was filed by a 48-year-old asylum seeker from Syria, who fled from his country in 2015. He was given "subsidiary protection" on account of the ongoing civil war in his country, but did not get full refugee status, which would allow him a longer visa and the option of brining his family to Germany. The "subsidiary protection" status grants a residence permit to stay in Germany for only one year and no option of immediate family reunion. The administrative court in Munster had initially repealed the decision before judges in the higher court reversed the verdict. The judgement sends a strong signal to other courts processing similar complaints. Altogether, administrative courts in NRW are processing nearly 12,300 cases registered by Syrian |
| Posted by:trailing wife |