Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER
Case No: UI-2025-004093

First-tier Tribunal No: PA/60718/2024
LP/06424/2024

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:

On 15th January 2026

Before

DEPUTY UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE SYMES

Between

RG
Appellant
and

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Mr Bazini
For the Respondent: Ms Nath, Senior Presenting Officer

Heard at Field House on 3 November 2025

DECISION AND REASONS

1. This is the appeal of RG, a citizen of Tajikstan born 23 July 2000, against the decision of the First-tier Tribunal of 4 August 2025 dismissing his appeal on asylum grounds, itself brought against the Respondent’s decision to refuse his asylum claim on 11 April 2024.

Background

2. The Appellant was a senior lecturer in English in Tajikstan and his asylum claim was based upon his religious convictions. He had become an English teacher at a college and wrote various religious treatises which, whilst unpublished, had been seen by some of his students when he left them unattended in his classroom. Furthermore, he believed that wearing a beard was important to his religion and understood that men who did so in Tajikstan would face persecution.

3. He obtained a visa as a seasonal worker in the UK and was granted leave to enter from 26 July 2022 to 15 January 2023. Although he had already purchased flight tickets to travel home, he learned from his brother that the authorities sought to arrest him and had prepared a case against him because of his religious writings. He therefore claimed asylum on 10 February 2023. He had received a summons of 23 March 2023 to appear before the authorities.

Decision of the First-tier Tribunal

4. The First-tier Tribunal observed that the only photograph of the Appellant for his visa application in 2022 showed him clean shaven and that he appeared to have around three days of facial hair growth when he attended the hearing. It found that

(a) His fears of the consequences of growing a beard were inconsistent with the fact that he had declared an intention to return to Tajikstan and in any event this concern had not been raised at his screening interview; at his substantive interview he had simply referred to being unable to grow a beard because he was a government worker. His evidence of having been forcibly shaved in Tajikstan was inconsistent with his oral account of having been forced to shave himself.

(b) His claim to face problems on account of his writings given he was a government employee was inconsistent with the letter which confirmed his employment at a non-governmental establishment. The translated extracts from his writings contained nothing objectionable and his name had not been attached to the documents.

(c) The summons did not identify the reason he was required to attend, and did not mention any threat of arrest or charge; and there was no indication of any action being taken since it was issued.

(d) The Appellant had claimed asylum only after a significant period in the UK.

The appeal to the Upper Tribunal

5. The Appellant's grounds of appeal are rather discursive, but in essence they contend that the First-tier Tribunal erred in law in

(a) Relying on its own perceived knowledge of the mechanics of the Islamic world, and failing to take account of the objective evidence that, whatever the general position on beards taken by Islam generally, Tajikstan had banned facial hair; the Appellant's evidence was to similar effect and he recounted both having been required to shave daily and also having been arrested and having his beard forcibly shaved.

(b) Relying on the Judge’s estimate that the Appellant was wearing a beard at the hearing of around three days’ growth given that beards may grow at different rates, and in having regard to the Appellant's lack of a beard in his visa application given that his evidence was that he had remained clean-shaven to avoid adverse attention in Tajikstan.

(c) Drawing an unfounded distinction between government and non-government schools given that the Appellant’s last place of employment, whilst non-governmental, had nevertheless issued a letter sealed by the “Ministry of Health and Social Protection of the Republic of Tajikistan” indicating that it operated under government auspices (this being a letter recording the Appellant's employment at a medical college as an English language teacher from January 2021 to January 2022).

(d) Treating the Appellant's indication of willingness to return to Tajikstan as undermining his asserted fear of persecution there, bearing in mind that the Appellant might nevertheless have been willing to return albeit that he would have then had to refrain from demonstrating his religious beliefs, which would itself be persecutory.

(e) Failing to take account of the content of the Appellant's religious writings which were relevant to his strength of religious conviction.

(f) Failing to take account of the country evidence regarding the repression of religious practice, which was relevant to the reaction that the Appellant’s writings would foreseeably receive given he had written of secularism and the evils of music as “the works of Satan” and a source of adultery.

(g) Failing to make any clear finding as to whether the summons was genuine.

6. Permission to appeal was granted by the First-tier Tribunal on 2 September 2025, without any restriction on the grounds of appeal that might be argued.

7. For the Appellant Mr Bazini stressed the volume and cogency of the country evidence which recounted difficulties for those wearing beards. There were no findings on the likelihood of official interest in the Appellant once it was accepted that his writings may have come to the authorities’ attention.

8. For the Respondent Ms Nath submitted that it was unnecessary for the judge to consider harms faced by those wearing beards as on the evidence before him the Appellant was not a person wishing to do so; the screening interview was part of the Appellant’s evidence and did not require any express highlighting for its consideration to be fair; Tanveer Ahmed principles applied in relation to the warrant; and as to the Appellant's credibility, he had not demonstrated that his writings had come to material attention.

Analysis

9. Country evidence before the Tribunal largely comprised media reports, including one from the BBC Russian Service of January 2016 stating that compulsory beard shaving was part of a government campaign targeting trends deemed alien and inconsistent with Tajik culture and that that forceful shaving took place at police stations; a media report of a police chief in a southern province in 2015 announced that some 13,000 men had been rounded up and had their beards “brought to order”; a media report from 2024 stating that compulsory beard shaving was part of an attack on freedom to practise Islam; a report from another source stating that a law passed in June 2024 banned clothes alien to Tajik culture imposing significant fines for its breach; and a 2024 report from The Diplomat stating that repression of religion over the last decade recording police raids on religious minorities and the imprisonment of Muslims for unauthorised religious activities, albeit in a broader context where the government was making some progress towards a more tolerant attitude. A Human Rights Watch report from 2021 recorded the severe curtailment of religion, with allegations of Salafist links being made against individuals denying the charges, their relatives reporting that they had been tortured to obtain confessions, and that consideration was being given to amending the criminal code to tighten the penalties for illegal religious education with imprisonment for up to three years. There was routine ill treatment of prisoners.

10. The translations of the Appellant's writings include passages condemning music, drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes due to the ensuing responsibility for moral and physical harm; he cited sources suggesting that music in particular was likely to promote adultery.

11. In the context of this matrix of evidence, it seems to me that the grounds of appeal have force. There is very little if any acknowledgement of the country evidence reporting serious restrictions on practising Islam. It is clear that wearing a beard can lead to forcible shaving by the police and that the expression of strong Islamic views could attract adverse attention from officialdom at the very least. Yet upon reading the First-tier Tribunal’s decision one derives no sense that the Judge weighed the Appellant's account in the context of that evidence. The Appellant’s evidence regarding the summons appears to be accepted, or at least not clearly rejected, and once one acknowledges the possibility of criminal charges being brought on what the country evidence suggests is at times an arbitrary basis for religious expression, it is very difficult to see how the potential danger posed by an official summons can reasonably be rejected on the basis that there is no real risk of mistreatment ensuing.

12. Unfortunately it is not possible to unravel the First-tier Tribunal’s findings on credibility and risk such that one can be confident that there is any reliable platform of primary facts from which one could subsequently re-determine the appeal based on the risks indicated by the country evidence. For this reason the appeal must be re-heard afresh, and given the scale of fact-finding required, that should take place in the First-tier Tribunal.

Notice of Decision

The appeal is allowed to the extent that it is remitted for hearing afresh before the First-tier Tribunal.

Mark Symes

Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

8 January 2026