Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER
Appeal Nos: UI-2025-000577
PA/60172/2023
LP/06849/2024

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:
15th August 2025

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE BULPITT
DEPUTY UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE FARRELLY

Between

Z X

(anonymity order made)
Appellant
and

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Mr M Aslam, Counsel instructed by Chancery Solicitors
For the Respondent: Ms R Tariq, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer.

Heard at Field House on 30th May 2025.

Order Regarding Anonymity

Pursuant to rule 14 of the Tribunal Procedure (Upper Tribunal) Rules 2008, the appellant is granted anonymity.

No-one shall publish or reveal any information, including the name or address of the appellant, likely to lead members of the public to identify him. Failure to comply with this order could amount to a contempt of court.

DECISION AND REASONS
Introduction
1. The appellant, Mr ZX, is a national of the People's Republic of China, born in 1995.
2. He entered the United Kingdom on the 24th of June 2017 and subsequently claimed protection. His account was that there was an altercation between the Chinese authorities and members of the Roman Catholic community at his local church in 2017. Following this, his father was assaulted and detained for 8 days. He did not claim any further issues with the authorities but later said that an arrest warrant for him had been issued and provided what he said was a copy of that warrant. The warrant is dated the 5th of February 2015, and he is accused of participating in an illegal cult, disrupting the social order.
3. In support of his claim about events he also provided a medical report about his father, dated the 25th of February 2017. It refers to a fractured clavicle and left scapular .
4. The respondent did not find the appellant to be credible. It formulated the claim as being that he was of adverse interest to the Chinese authorities because he was Roman Catholic and because of his father's activities. The respondent accepted that the Convention was potentially engaged because of his religion. However, the respondent referred to the country guidance decision of QH (Christians - risk) (China) CG which concluded that Christians in China faced a low risk of persecution.
5. The respondent also referred to country information that indicated that individuals leaving must pass through several identity checks and asserted that if an arrest warrant had been issued this would have been flagged up and the appellant would have been detained attempting to leave China. It was also pointed out he entered the United Kingdom using a false passport.
6. The claim was refused on the 16th of October 2023. The appellant unsuccessfully appealed to the First-tier Tribunal and now has been given permission to appeal to the Upper Tribunal. His appeal was heard at first instance by First-tier Tribunal Judge Wolfson at Taylor House on the 3rd of September 2024. An Article 8 claim based upon private life had been introduced. Counsel represented him and there was a presenting officer in attendance.
7. First tier Tribunal Judge Wolfson concluded that the appellant did not have a well-founded fear of persecution. The judge found the arrest warrant could not be relied upon and placed little weight on it. The judge pointed out the appellant initially said he had never been accused of an offence in China but he then said this was the main reason he left China. He did not produce the warrant until after his claim had been refused. The respondent referred to an inconsistency in the appellant’s account about how he obtained the warrant. He had initially said he asked his father to post it to him. However, there was a witness statement from a Mr Q who said he had visited China and brought it back with him to the United Kingdom on the 1st of February 2024.
8. The judge said that even if he took the medical evidence at face value there was no indication in the medical report of the cause of his father’s injuries and that the Certificate of Labour Capacity Assessment indicated the injuries were work-related. The Judge noted that this evidence had also been produced at a late stage.
9. Permission to appeal was initially refused by a First tier Tribunal Judge on the basis the grounds amounted to nothing more than a disagreement with the judge’s findings, findings which were properly open to the judge. Permission was then granted by an Upper Tribunal judge on the basis it was arguable that the judge’s assessment of the appellant's credibility and the reliability of the documents he provided was erroneous.
The Upper Tribunal
10. At the hearing before us Mr Aslam accepted that the issues in contention were narrow and he focused upon the Judge’s treatment of documents upon which the appellant relied. He said that if it was being suggested the arrest warrant was a forgery then it is for the respondent to show this. He argued that the respondent’s review plainly indicated it was being suggested the warrant was a forgery, stating at paragraph 11 that only a copy had been provided, and the respondent therefore could not verify its authenticity.
11. Reference was made by the Judge to the decision of Tanveer Ahmed (documents unreliable and forged) Pakistan [2002] UKIAT 00439 and the country information report of 2021 which referred to large scale fraud in relation to documents in China. Mr Aslam said the judge had commented and given reasons in relation to reliability and that had matters ended there he could not complain. However, he said the judge went further and as far as to say the documents were fraudulent which amounted to an error of law because an allegation of fraud placed the burden of proof on the respondent and required them to substantiate it.
12. Mr Aslam argued that the complaints in grounds two and three of the grounds of appeal were in reality challenges to the adequacy of the Judge’s reasoning. He recognised that the Article 8 human rights claim was parasitic upon the protection claim.
13. Ms Tariq responded by submitting that the grounds argued amounted to no more than a disagreement with the outcome from the First-tier tribunal and that the Judge’s approach to the documentary evidence was consistent with establish case law.
Consideration
14. It is worthwhile revisiting what was said in Tanveer Ahmed (documents unreliable and forged) Pakistan. It concerned the issuance in Pakistan of an arrest warrant and an FIR. Mr. C. M. G. Ockelton (Deputy President) giving judgment referred to the then tribunal procedural rules at paragraph 30 and stated there will be a burden on the respondent only in those rare cases where it is necessary to establish the document is not merely unreliable but also a forgery. Those procedural rules provided that it was for the individual claimant to show a document is reliable in the same way as any other piece of evidence is. Paragraph 35 stated that in almost all cases it would be an error to concentrate on whether a document is a forgery. It should be assessed in the same way as any other piece of evidence and not viewed in isolation. Paragraph 3 of the case summary states that it would be only rarely that there would be a need to make an allegation of forgery. This would require strong evidence to support it. The issue is reliability.
15. We also refer to the decision of QC (verification of documents; Mibanga duty) China [2021] UKUT 00033 (IAC). It reinforces what was said in Tanveer Ahmed (documents unreliable and forged) Pakistan, stating that the overarching issue in Immigration Appeals was for the judicial fact finder to determine whether the document can be regarded as reliable. The greater the relevance of a particular piece of evidence the greater is the need to show due regard to it.
16. It is our view that the arrest warrant and the medical report form part of the claim but were not central to it. It is clear from the determination that the judge considered this documentary evidence in the context of the wider case. The arrest warrant was an important document because the respondent had made the point that if it existed then the appellant could not have easily left China, given the checks at airports. The appellant countered this by saying he in fact flew to Ecuador which had no visa requirement and had used an agent. This does not completely answer the point of checks on people leaving the country when there is an outstanding warrant.
17. Specific to the arrest warrant, the judge at paragraph 17 give clear reasons for placing little weight on it. Firstly, the appellant had, in his initial interview said he had never been accused of any offence in China. He then in the substantive interview said there was a warrant for his arrest. The judge acknowledged that discrepancies between the two stages of the assessment process are not necessarily significant, but it was reasonable to expect the appellant to be consistent on this issue, particularly as he said this was one of the main factors which caused him to leave. Furthermore, he did not submit the arrest warrant until after his application had been refused. He had said he had only obtained it as he needed it for his appeal. However, the judge found it was reasonable for him to ask for a copy to be sent before then. There was also an inconsistency as to how he obtained the document. The judge has set out a sound basis for attaching little weight to this piece of evidence.
18. The fact that the Judge also explained his decision by reference to the contents of the DFAT Country Information Report – China (22/11/2021) including the fact that fraudulent documents in Cina are very common does not mean the Judge went beyond an assessment of reliability or that there was a specific allegation that the document produced was a forgery. The Country Information Report was unquestionably something the Judge was entitled to consider when assessing whether he could rely on the specific document adduced by the appellant. This was not one of the unusual cases where the burden fell on the respondent to make good an allegation of a forgery. The Judge was required to assess the arrest warrant and to decide what weight to attach to that document in the context of the appellant’s overall claim. That is exactly what the Judge did and that involved no error of law.
19. Paragraph 18 of the judgment comments on the medical report. It makes allowance for its late submission on the basis the appellant may not have appreciated its significance. However, the document itself gave no information as to the cause of the injuries and the phraseology suggests it related to a work incident. In these circumstances the Judge was entitled to place little weight on the report when assessing the appellant’s protection claim even having taken it at face value.
20. It is our conclusion that no material error of law in the way the Judge assessed the documentary evidence has been established.
21. Wisely, Mr Aslam did not focus on grounds two and three of the grounds of appeal recognising that some parts of the grounds (e.g. at [11] “The discrepancy findings diminishing credibility were made on a float basis outlined above”) were indecipherable. His argument that these grounds raised a challenge to the adequacy of the Judge’s reasons was not persuasive. When the decision is read as a whole the Judge unquestionably gave adequate reasons to explain why he found the appellant has not attracted the adverse attention of the authorities in China as claimed and did not have a well-founded fear of persecution. It is equally clear that at [26] and [27] the Judge gave adequate reasons for why the appellant’s private life interests were outweighed by the public interest in maintaining effective immigration control. As Mr Aslam rightly recognised that conclusion was inevitable once the protection claim had been dismissed.
22. We conclude therefore that the Judge did not make an error of law and the decision dismissing the appellant’s appeal shall stand.
Decision
No material error of law has been demonstrated. Therefore, the decision of First tier Tribunal Judge Wolfson dismissing the appellant’s appeal shall stand.

Francis J Farrelly.
DUT Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber
25 July 2025