Italy used to respect the principle of non-refoulement, or non-deportation of refugees to countries where they risk arrest and torture. Is this no longer the case?
by Massimo Introvigne
A CAG female devotee interrogated in jail. From the CAG film “Branded.”
The Church of Almighty God (CAG), a Christian new religious movement, is the most persecuted religious group in China together with Falun Gong. More than 10,000 CAG members have escaped China and sought asylum in democratic countries. As Western scholars have increasingly studied the CAG and debunked the fake news about the movement spread by China abroad through its embassies, many CAG refugees have been granted asylum. But not all. In some cases, asylum commissions and courts are still not well informed about the CAG. In others, CAG asylum seekers, like other Chinese refugees, make mistakes in their applications because of lack of language skills and familiarity with Western laws.
A key principle of international refugee law is non-refoulement. No matter whether asylum is granted, refugees cannot be deported to countries where they are at risk of persecution, imprisonment, and torture. In 2021, the United Nations Committee Against Torture ruled against Switzerland, which had denied asylum to a CAG devotee, stating that CAG members in China, or deported to China after their asylum requests have been denied abroad, are “at risk of torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”
Italy used to be a safe haven for CAG refugees. Not all were granted asylum, but the principle of non-refoulement was generally respected. Unfortunately, it seems that this is no longer the case. “Bitter Winter” has received the legal documents about the case of H.H., a middle-aged female CAG devotee. We know her real name but are not publishing it as this may make her position in China even worse.
H.H. was in a difficult personal situation in 2005, as she felt exploited at work and her fiancé had left her breaking a promise of marriage, when she joined the CAG and found peace in her new faith. She had, however, joined the church in a difficult moment. The government’s crackdown against the CAG and a campaign of slander were in full force. Influenced by the media campaigns, her mother tried to lock H.H. in her room at home to prevent her further participation in CAG activities. Undaunted, she escaped and decided to work for CAG as a full-time evangelist.
As was the case for many co-religionists, she spent the following years playing a cat-and-mouse game with the police, as the CAG is listed in China as a xie jiao, a banned religious organization, and any activity on its behalf is punished with lengthy prison sentences under Article 300 of the Chinese Criminal Code. H.H. barely escaped arrest in 2011 and again in 2015. In 2015, a co-religionist was arrested and tortured to compel her to reveal H.H.’s whereabouts.
This persuaded H.H. that it was time to leave China and seek asylum in the West. Decisions by courts of law on asylum cases in several countries, including in Italy, have answered the objection often raised by administrative authorities, that those wanted in China by the police should not be able to obtain a passport, pass border controls equipped with facial recognition, and leave the country. The objection does not consider that, as confirmed by its own statistics, China has one of the highest percentages of administrative corruption cases in the world, including in the police. Technology cannot be corrupted, but those who input (and can control and delete) data can, and H.H. hinted at the fact that she used the services of a “relative working for the government” and a significant sum of money changed hands.
CAG refugees’ musical performance in Italy.
In Italy, H.H. got a temporary residence permit but her application for asylum was rejected in 2018 and again in 2020. Court appeals failed. She resubmitted the application in 2022. The present Italian attitude (although not unanimously) is to reject asylum applications when they are filed a second time, unless there are new facts concerning the refugees personally rather than their country in general. H.H.
went sixth times to the police station to check the status of her second application between 2023 and 2024. The sixth time, in the last month of July, she was detained and taken within 24 hours before a Justice of the Peace, who confirmed her order of deportation to China, which was immediately enforced. At the airport in China, she miraculously passed immigration as the cover established through the “relative working for the government” held, or perhaps the border guards were just careless. But she immediately learned the police went looking for her at her last known address in China and is now hiding again.
Reviewing the file, it is clear that H.H. made mistakes. Presented with a form that had three options about the reasons she came to Italy—tourism, seeking work, and “other”—she should have selected “other” as an asylum seeker. Instead, she crossed “seeking work,” meaning she did not plan to live on public or private charity if the asylum was granted—but it was the wrong answer. When asked whether, given that the police planned to deport her to China, she would “travel to China spontaneously” or will have to be “forcibly accompanied to the border,” she made another fatal mistake. Ignoring the intricacies of Italian law, she did not know that by accepting to “travel to China spontaneously” she would have bought time to have a lawyer file an appeal on her behalf, while by selecting the other option she was quickly taken before a Justice of Peace and put on a plane to China. What she meant was that she was not accepting “spontaneously” to be deported. But again, her answer was the wrong one. Note that the forms she was asked to sign were in Italian and English, and no Chinese translation was provided.
A CAG female devotee interrogated by the police. From the CAG film “Branded.”
While H.H.’s mistakes lead to the conclusion that formally the Italian authorities did not violate any Italian law, both common sense and the international humanitarian and refugee law principle of non-refoulement were violated. Those who decided to deport H.H. to China knew she was a CAG member. One wonder whether they were also aware of multiple Italian decisions, including a very recent one, confirming that being a member of the CAG is enough to be at risk of arrest and worse in China, and of the 2021 decision of the United Nations Committee Against Torture, stating that CAG devotees should not be deported to China because they are at risk of being tortured there.
Some may maliciously suspect that political motivations played some role in the decision of deporting back to her native a country a Chinese asylum seeker, and a member of a religion the CCP hates with a vengeance, a few days before Italian Prime Minister’s visit to China. A way of thinking ill, no doubt. However, a famous Italian Prime Minister used to say that thinking ill is a sin but is rarely a mistake.
Source: BITTER WINTER
