TrustHLT/LaCour huggingface dataset:
AP1 (Applicant): When an asylum seeker is forced to illegally cross the border, fleeing from persecution, he must submit an application to the authorities within 24 hours after crossing the border.
AP1 (Applicant): Therefore, the government's claim that the applicants in the present case violated the procedures and exceeded the 24-hour time limit for applying for refuge is irrelevant, as this time limit applies only to those who have already crossed the border illegally.
AP1 (Applicant): Further, I would like to stress that the law does not provide detailed rules for regulating the procedure of lodging an application for refuge with the border guard service.
AP1 (Applicant): In practice, the border guard service officers enjoy significant discretion whether to accept an application or not.
AP1 (Applicant): And their arbitrary powers are not subject to any control.
AP1 (Applicant): For instance, the officers refuse to accept applications written in foreign languages, which happened in the case of Mr. Yassin.
AP1 (Applicant): Even if the officers do accept certain applications, they often refuse to register them, which is necessary to confirm that the applications have been lodged.
AP1 (Applicant): Regarding Sheremetyevo Airport, the situation is made even worse by the fact that the border guard service registry office is located outside the transit zone.
AP1 (Applicant): Thus, the asylum seekers cannot file any complaints through the registry, nor can they send a complaint by mail, as there is no post office either.
AP1 (Applicant): Therefore, asylum seekers lack any guarantees about mere acceptance of their applications in transit zones.
AP1 (Applicant): If the border guard service finally accepts an application, they must transmit it to a migration authority within three working days.
AP1 (Applicant): The migration authority then shall conduct its preliminary examination that includes interviewing the applicant within five days.
AP1 (Applicant): In the present case, this rule was grossly violated by the authorities.
AP1 (Applicant): It took 45 days to interview Mr. Yassin, 50 days for Mr. Zia,
AP1 (Applicant): 62 days for Mr. MB, and 82 days for Mr. AM.
AP1 (Applicant): Upon preliminary examination, the migration authority shall decide whether to consider the application on the merits or not.
AP1 (Applicant): If it decides to consider it on the merits, the asylum seeker shall be provided with an examination certificate.
AP1 (Applicant): Under the Refugees Act, any asylum seeker granted such certificate has a number of social rights.
AP1 (Applicant): Thus, he is entitled to be allocated to a temporary accommodation center with food and medical assistance.
AP1 (Applicant): There are no exceptions to this rule for asylum seekers in transit zones.
AP1 (Applicant): And indeed, there have been examples when such asylum seekers were allocated to accommodation centers.
AP1 (Applicant): Thus, in 2015, a family of Syrian refugees who did not have any visas submitted applications for refuge in the transit zone of Sheremetyevo Airport.
AP1 (Applicant): And they were accommodated at the special center Serebreniki in Tver region.
AP1 (Applicant): Nevertheless, in the present case, the applicants were not provided with examination certificates.
AP1 (Applicant): If such certificates were indeed issued in their names, as claimed by the government, it is likely that they were retained by the migration authority, for it is a well-established practice to issue but not deliver certificates to asylum seekers in detention.
AP1 (Applicant): They are just kept at the Migration Service Office together with the case files.
AP1 (Applicant): Throughout the asylum proceedings, the applicants requested the migration authorities to issue and deliver the certificates to them.
AP1 (Applicant): However, such requests were completely ignored.
AP1 (Applicant): And further complaints were completely ignored as well.
AP1 (Applicant): Neither did the migration authority object to such arguments before the national courts.
AP1 (Applicant): And no copies of the certificates or receipts signed by the applicants were provided by the government to the court, although those certificates are normally delivered against receipts.
AP1 (Applicant): Moving further, I would like to cover the maximum time limits for the asylum proceedings.
AP1 (Applicant): The administrative stage of the proceedings, including consideration of the appeal by the Federal Migration Authority, shall not exceed about five months.
AP1 (Applicant): An asylum seeker may further challenge the denial before a district court.
AP1 (Applicant): That shall consider the case within one month.
AP1 (Applicant): And the appellate court must examine the appeal within two months.
AP1 (Applicant): In the cases of all four applicants, the maximum time limits for the judicial stage were not complied with.
AP1 (Applicant): As regards Mr. AM, who was still confined in the transit zone,
AP1 (Applicant): expecting the final decision on his refugee status, it took the district court more than eight months and the appellate court more than four months to consider his case.
AP1 (Applicant): It is also important to underline that neither the Federal Migration Authority nor a court is entitled to grant refugee status.
AP1 (Applicant): If the refusal of the local migration authority has been quashed, it is only required to re-examine the case, which may last for a few more months and result in another refusal on some new grounds.
AP1 (Applicant): To sum up, the Russian law does not ensure enough speediness of the asylum procedure.
AP1 (Applicant): However, in the present case, the authorities fail to comply even with the existing standards, let alone their failure to consider the applicants' requests more speedily, taking into account the circumstances of the case.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): Thank you very much, Mr. Zharinov.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): Now I call Mrs. Davidyan.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): Please fill the floor.
AP2 (Applicant): Mr. President, honorable judges, it
AP2 (Applicant): is well-established case law of the court that confinement of aliens in an international zone of an airport is acceptable only if it is accompanied by safeguards for the persons concerned and is not prolonged excessively.
AP2 (Applicant): Otherwise, a mere restriction on liberty turns into deprivation of liberty.
AP2 (Applicant): It is not disputed that the applicants stayed in the transit zone for extremely long periods of time in appalling conditions, and their confinement was not regulated in accordance with the Article V guarantees.
AP2 (Applicant): Therefore, the main issue to be assessed is whether the applicants consented to the deprivation of liberty.
AP2 (Applicant): We believe that the facts of the case clearly show that the applicants did not choose to stay in the airport transit zone and had no opportunity to leave it without risking their lives.
AP2 (Applicant): However, we would like to address the main points of the government's arguments presented in their submissions.
AP2 (Applicant): I will start by noting once again that there is no such legal concept as genuine or fake asylum seeker for the purpose of the Refugee Convention or domestic law.
AP2 (Applicant): Individuals either seek asylum or they don't.
AP2 (Applicant): The applicants did.
AP2 (Applicant): They had to.
AP2 (Applicant): None of them were aiming to enter Russia, especially in violation of migration rules.
AP2 (Applicant): None of them chose Russia over any other destination.
AP2 (Applicant): They found themselves in Sheremetyevo Airport against their will, not being able to return to their home countries or take a flight to any other country.
AP2 (Applicant): Three of them were fleeing from threats to their lives.
AP2 (Applicant): The fourth was unable to return home due to no access.
AP2 (Applicant): Therefore, applying to the Russian authorities for asylum was their last chance, not to enter Russia, but to prevent forced return and to get out of the limbo, legal and physical, of the transit zone.
AP2 (Applicant): The applicants believed that they were refugees and should have been granted asylum under the Russian law.
AP2 (Applicant): However, they did not complain that the refusal to grant them asylum violated their convention rights.
AP2 (Applicant): The applicants did not claim that they had a right to asylum, did not demand any benefits of a refugee or any special care from the government.
AP2 (Applicant): The present application does not depend on whether the applicants should have been granted status as refugees.
AP2 (Applicant): The applicants only demanded respect for the rights that were provided by Russian law, the right to apply for asylum, and the rights and procedural guarantees of an asylum seeker, including the right not to be arbitrarily confined in inhuman conditions.
AP2 (Applicant): The government is persuading us that they did not have any obligations in respect of the applicants, as their applications for refuge were, quote, artificially created.
AP2 (Applicant): However, the authorities did accept the applications and considered them on the merits, thus establishing the applicant's status as asylum seekers.
AP2 (Applicant): The authorities did not refer to any provision of domestic or international law which would have permitted to refuse to take a decision on the applicant's refugee claims.
AP2 (Applicant): The Russian government, and following them the Hungarian government, were quick to accuse the applicants of violating procedural rules when applying for asylum.
AP2 (Applicant): However, as my colleague explained, none of the rules were violated.
AP2 (Applicant): Moreover, the authorities did not raise this argument at any stage of examination.
AP2 (Applicant): Despite the fact that there was no information in the airport on procedures for applying for asylum, and border guard officers refused to provide any help, the applicants managed to submit their applications for refuge as the law required them to.
AP2 (Applicant): With the help of the UNHCR, the applicants strove to find countries they could live for.
AP2 (Applicant): Mr. Yassin even managed to purchase a ticket
AP2 (Applicant): and try to travel to Lebanon in September 2015.
AP2 (Applicant): However, the Lebanese authorities denied him entry, apparently because his passport seized by the Russian border guard service was handed not to him, but to an aircraft crew member.
AP2 (Applicant): All in all, we can confidently claim that the applicants did try to solve their problems themselves.
AP2 (Applicant): The government suggests that, I quote, the only way for a government to avoid the violation of Article 5 of the convention is to let any person, even that pretending to be an asylum seeker, to enter their territory and to allow them to move freely without any obstacles, as any placement of a person, whether to a hotel or a special center, would in fact constitute the deprivation of liberty.
AP2 (Applicant): We have to disagree with this argument.
AP2 (Applicant): First of all, not every deprivation of liberty violates Article 5.
AP2 (Applicant): Only an unnecessary, unlawful, and arbitrary one does.
AP2 (Applicant): Therefore, a great way for a government to avoid the violation of Article 5 is to execute restriction or deprivation of liberty in compliance with clear and foreseeable law with access to timely judicial review.
AP2 (Applicant): Further, a placement of the applicants to a hotel or a special center in a lawful manner would have not only not violated Article 5, but also would have met most of the applicants' needs pending the consideration of their applications.
AP2 (Applicant): Lastly, letting an asylum seeker enter the territory of the country is not at all necessary to avoid violation of their rights.
AP2 (Applicant): In the applicant's case, it was the most logical, simple, and the only available option provided by Russian law.
AP2 (Applicant): But although it is still unclear what exactly was that certain reason the government mentioned not to let the applicants enter the country in this case, as we know of cases when asylum seekers were let in without any damage to state sovereignty, the provisions of Russian law that should have been applied to the applicants are actually beyond sufficient to observe the rights of asylum seekers at the border.
AP2 (Applicant): Basic legal due process guarantees, simplest accommodation facilities in the transit zone, and speediness of review would have enabled the authorities to avoid the necessity of permitting asylum seekers to enter the country without violating international obligations.
AP2 (Applicant): As regards the arguments of the Hungarian government's intervention, we would like to note the following.
AP2 (Applicant): Governments adopt international regulations to control migration.
AP2 (Applicant): And when these regulations fail to serve their purpose and the public perception of those failures is concerning to the politicians in power, it is hardly the refugees' fault.
AP2 (Applicant): Neither is it the fault of international organizations and institutions created by the governments in order to observe and control compliance with the fundamental human rights.
AP2 (Applicant): Mr. President, honorable judges, on the basis of the foregoing,
AP2 (Applicant): we respectfully ask the court to uphold the chamber's findings and to declare that the applicants were deprived of their liberty in violation of Article 5 and the conditions of their confinement constituted an infringement of their Article 3 rights.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): Thank you very much, Mrs. Davidyan. Now I call Mr. Galperin.
GR1 (Government): The applicants' counsel tried to get the court's sympathy by raising new points, which we never had before.
GR1 (Government): For example, that there was a persecution in Iraq for one of the applicants for religion, and also that the Islamic State organization treasoned him, really.
GR1 (Government): Also, applicants never submitted that they were not able to leave Russia on the reason of the absence of the documents which were seized by the Russian authorities.
GR1 (Government): Mr. President, Honorable Judges of the Court,
GR1 (Government): recent years, especially 2015, when really these events in question occurred, have been marked by a tremendous flow of refugees to Europe and resulted in what is now known as refugee crisis.
GR1 (Government): It affected not just a handful of countries, but in the whole European continent and became a matter of growing concern.
GR1 (Government): Increasing number of refugees has made the receiving countries to adopt several quite burdensome measures aimed at resolution of this problem and resettlement of the refugees and their integration into the European society.
GR1 (Government): Moreover, some experts report that the massive influx of refugees resulted in such devastating consequences as violent cultural crisis, increase of crime rate and harassment against women, growing number of terrorist attacks, creation of camps such as jungle in Kale, and so on other so-called no-go zones.
GR1 (Government): At the same time, significant amount of these people are not refugees, but migrants.
GR1 (Government): Pretending to be refugees, they leave their countries in search of a better life.
GR1 (Government): Therefore, some states were first to adopt harsh measures to deal with the wave of asylum seeking migrants.
GR1 (Government): Such measures include, in particular, acceleration of the expulsion of migrants who do not qualify for asylum and making illegal border crossing a criminal offense, limiting aid for asylum seekers and refugees, reintroduction of border controls, and deployment of armed troops on the borders, limitation of family reunification, and other measures.
GR1 (Government): It is remarkable that sometimes these measures even run counter to the state's obligations under relevant agreements and regulations.
GR1 (Government): This huge income of aliens also required from the countries to pay closer look to the personal circumstances of each person and to assess individually their applications when deciding whether a person is indeed a refugee under the UN Refugee Convention.
GR1 (Government): Thus, this case raises in clear terms the distinction between refugees and economic migrants, which the applicant sides try to reject.
GR1 (Government): That distinction is important to maintain.
GR1 (Government): Unless states are allowed to distinguish between people genuinely trying to escape oppression and people seeking economic benefits, very serious consequences will result across the European continent.
GR1 (Government): Relief for real refugees will be delayed and obstructed.
GR1 (Government): Host populations will be antagonized, and politics will become more extreme.
GR1 (Government): The executive committee of the High Commissioner's Program recognized, and I quote, the importance of making the necessary distinction between the situation of refugees and asylum seekers and that of other aliens.
GR1 (Government): According to the UN Refugee Convention and Correspondents Clarification, a refugee is someone who has been forced to flee his or her country because of persecution, war, or violence.
GR1 (Government): A genuine refugee has a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group.
GR1 (Government): Such people focus on escape from oppression rather than choice of destination.
GR1 (Government): Accordingly, the EU Dublin regulation proclaims that refugees are supposed to apply for asylum in the first European Union country.
GR1 (Government): They must also apply for asylum promptly, as would be expected of genuine refugees, and they must demonstrate a well-founded fear of persecution.
GR1 (Government): That requires them to show a good reason for fearing persecution if they are sent home.
GR1 (Government): States are entitled to assess whether a potential migrant is a genuine refugee rather than someone who merely seeks better economic opportunities.
GR1 (Government): Moreover, while the Refugee Convention obliges states to guarantee the protection of genuine refugees, issues relating to migrants and assessment of their status are national prerogatives.
GR1 (Government): As I shall demonstrate, Russia has made a fair assessment, well within the margin of appreciation of the Russian authorities, that the applicants in the present case were not genuine refugees.
GR1 (Government): I deal first with Mr. Z.A., concerning whom
GR1 (Government): the key facts are the following, and they were also briefly structured by my opposite counsel.
GR1 (Government): First is Mr. Z.A. is from Iraq.
GR1 (Government): After leaving Iraq, he went to Turkey.
GR1 (Government): He then lived in Turkey for almost one year.
GR1 (Government): There is no suggestion that he faced any oppression in Turkey.
GR1 (Government): During his stay in Turkey, he claims that he registered at the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and applied for asylum.
GR1 (Government): He said that he was never called to an interview to assess his status in Turkey, but he doesn't suggest that he pressed at any time to have his application considered.
GR1 (Government): After Turkey, he traveled to China for the admitted reason that he wanted to find a job there.
GR1 (Government): There is no suggestion that he faced any persecution in China also, but he failed to apply for assignment there.
GR1 (Government): He claims that there were no established procedure for him to do so, but this statement is ill-founded.
GR1 (Government): There is no suggestion that he made any approach at any time to any relevant authorities in China, including the police or immigration authorities, in order to seek asylum.
GR1 (Government): Eventually, Mr. Zia decided to go back to Turkey from China.
GR1 (Government): He traveled back via Russia, and during his transit in Russia, he didn't seek asylum also.
GR1 (Government): But then Turkey refused his entry.
GR1 (Government): It is unclear whether at this point he sought to assert refugee status or to revive any early application for asylum in Turkey.
GR1 (Government): And Turkey sent Mr. Zia back to Russia.
GR1 (Government): Facing immigration obstacles in Russia after two days, he finally came up with the idea of claiming refugee status in Russia.
GR1 (Government): Turkey may or may not have discharged its obligation properly under the Refugee Convention when allegedly called upon to assess his status.
GR1 (Government): However, the key point for present purposes is that he was safe in Turkey, but he chose not to stay there.
GR1 (Government): He was safe in China, but chose also not to stay there.
GR1 (Government): On these facts, the Russian authorities were quite plainly entitled to assess, reasonably, that he was not a genuine refugee entitled to protection under the Refugee Convention, and contrary to my opponent's allegation, that really the destination meant for them.
GR1 (Government): Russia has no obligation to accommodate people who face no persecution where they came from.
GR1 (Government): Russia has no obligation to accommodate people whose trips are determined by their economic prospects rather than oppression.
GR1 (Government): I turn now to Mr. M.B. In this case,
GR1 (Government): the KFX are the following.
GR1 (Government): Mr. M.B. apparently left Palestine for Russia
GR1 (Government): because of the difficulties of life there, but not because of any particular oppression of him as an individual.
GR1 (Government): He obtained a business visa for one year.
GR1 (Government): On this basis, he spent almost a year in Russia with a string of regular jobs.
GR1 (Government): Then, one month after the expiry of his visa, he applied for temporary asylum in Russia.
GR1 (Government): At no point did he articulate any basis for fearing any specific oppression in Palestine.
GR1 (Government): He failed also to explain why he had failed to apply to extend his visa or to legalize his stay in Russia.
GR1 (Government): Unsurprisingly, the applicant was found guilty of violation of immigration rules, and his expulsion in the form of controlled unassisted departure was ordered.
GR1 (Government): The applicant decided to go back to Palestine, which confirms that he didn't fear any particular oppression there.
GR1 (Government): However, there are far crossing point, as it was pointed, when the Egyptian border was closed, and the applicant was returned from Egypt to Russia.
GR1 (Government): There is no indication that he applied for asylum in Egypt also.
GR1 (Government): In Russia, the applicant faced immigration obstacles because of his prior history and his absence of any valid visa.
GR1 (Government): Three weeks after his arrival in Russia, he came up also with the idea to apply for refugee status.
GR1 (Government): Eventually, the far crossing point was opened, and Mr. Mb returned to Palestine,
GR1 (Government): where it appears he continues to reside.
GR1 (Government): He makes no case that he has faced any persecution since his return there.
GR1 (Government): That again demonstrates the absence of any reason for fearing persecution when he claimed asylum in the first place.
GR1 (Government): On these facts, once again, I respectfully suggest that Russian authorities were entitled to conclude reasonably that Mr. Mb was not
GR1 (Government): a genuine refugee also.
GR1 (Government): Distinguished judges, I turn to Mr. Am now.
GR1 (Government): In his case, the facts are the following.
GR1 (Government): Mr. Am fled from Somalia to Yemen
GR1 (Government): and was granted refugee status there.
GR1 (Government): Subsequently, he obtained a residence permit in Yemen, and eventually Yemen nationality and Yemen passport.
GR1 (Government): Eventually, due to a dispute with the private party, he decided to move to Cuba.
GR1 (Government): There is no suggestion that he faced any oppression from the state authorities in Yemen.
GR1 (Government): There is no suggestion either that he sought any protection from them in relation to his private difficulties there.
GR1 (Government): Mr. Am claims that he applied for asylum when he went to Cuba,