CCPR/C/115/D/2351/2014
authorities. The Board found no basis for rejecting the statement of the applicant’s son,
I.G., that he had been accosted and beaten by older boys from the same school, or for
rejecting the applicants’ statement to the effect that, on leaving church the following
Sunday, the family had been sought out by two of the older pupils and two other, slightly
older, men, who had hit R.G. and I.G. and pushed R.G.’s daughters. The Board stated,
however, that R.G.’s statement about the fire appeared uncertain and fabricated for the
occasion. The Board took into account that it was difficult for R.G. to determine exactly
and consistently when and how she had discovered that one of the rooms in the house was
on fire, but it could not consider it to have been established as fact that the applicant’s home
was set on fire on 27 May 2012.4 The Board also noted that the authors had not reported the
incidents at the school and outside the church to the authorities. It found that the isolated
incidents referred to by the authors related to disagreements between the author’s son and
some of his schoolmates and could not be the basis for granting the authors protection
status under section 7 of the Aliens Act. The Board considered that the issue was a private
law conflict that was not of an intensity or nature that could justify the granting of asylum
on the basis of a risk of persecution or abuse under sections 7 (1) or 7 (2) of the Aliens Act,
should the authors be returned to Pakistan. The Board therefore upheld the decision of the
Danish Immigration Service of 22 March 2013.
2.5
The authors further report that in April 2012, G, another of R.G.’s sons, had married
a Muslim woman, who later converted to Christianity. The authors’ family broke off its
relations with G in 2011 because they were offended that he would have a relationship with
a non-Christian woman. The authors claim that in May and November 2011, G was shot at
on several occasions because of the relationship. He therefore left Pakistan with the woman
on an unspecified date, after marrying her. On 24 June 2013, the couple was granted
asylum in Denmark under section 7 (1) of the Danish Aliens Act because of the harassment
they had suffered from the woman’s family and the local population in Islamabad, where
they lived, after her conversion to Christianity.5 In deliberating on the couple’s application
for asylum, the Board accepted the assumption that the father of G’s wife was probably
behind the shooting attacks of 2011.
2.6
It was only after G. and his wife were granted a residence permit that the authors
reconciled with them in Denmark, and the whole family was reunited. The reconciliation
made it possible for the counsels of the authors and of G and his wife, and the asylum
authorities, to compare information relating to the two cases. The authors submit that there
is a great risk that the situation of G and his wife could have a negative impact on their own
situation if they were returned to Pakistan because the authors, including the young
daughters, would be at risk of escalated harassment, threats, violence and even rape. The
authors also claim that the harassment they suffered in May 2012 was connected to the
persecution suffered by G and his wife in 2011 as a result of their relationship and marriage
in April 2012, only one month before the author’s family was attacked.
2.7
On 12 August 2013, the authors requested the Board to reconsider its decision to
reject their asylum application. In their request, they recounted for the first time the story of
G and his wife, and claimed that it could not be excluded that the attacks they suffered were
because of G’s marriage. The authors also argued that the fact that G had been persecuted
4
5
4
According to the Board’s assessment of facts in the context of its decision of 13 June 2013, the author
was asleep in the afternoon or evening when a fire was set in the family’s house. The Board
emphasized in particular that R.G. had difficulty in determining precisely when she discovered a fire
in one room, as she had not been able precisely and consistently to explain where in the house she
was when she discovered the fire. The Board thus could not find ground to accept that the authors’
home had been set on fire on 27 May 2012.
G and his wife entered Denmark separately from the authors.