Prague, Feb 22 (CTK) – Seventy Chinese Christian asylum seekers have been rejected, eight have been granted asylum and 14 have withdrawn their applications and left the country, Czech Interior Minister Lubomir Metnar told Thursday’s issue of daily Pravo.
According to Pravo’s source, two men and six women, mostly young, were granted asylum.
“As it was revealed and confirmed that these people were persecuted and faced a real threat, we granted asylum to them,” Metnar said.
The Chinese applied for asylum in the Czech Republic two years ago. They said they sought asylum because they were persecuted in their homeland over their Christian religion.
Czech authorities said China’s political regime and Czech-Chinese economic relations played no role in the decision-making process.
Though the Interior Ministry rejected their applications, the 70 Chinese may legally stay in the Czech Republic and have all the rights, including having a place to live and access to health care, until Czech courts decide on their possible appeals against the ministry’s verdict. It may take at least several months for the final decision on their cases to be issued.
The Christian community has been persecuted in China for a long time, but the authorities have recently allegedly adopted even a stricter attitude towards it. Catholics and Protestants are officially recognised, but the churches are monitored by the secret police.
Metnar said thorough checks carried out in China did not reveal any persecution in the 70 cases of rejected applicants.
He said the asylum procedure lasted long because the applicants submitted many documents that had to be checked. “It were hundreds of written documents. Given the extent and the capacity of our ministry it lasted longer,” he told Pravo.
Opposition lawmakers challenged former prime minister Bohuslav Sobotka (Social Democrats, CSSD) and current Prime Minister Andrej Babis (ANO) over the lengthy process. Some of them speculated that Czech business interests in China and the open government policy towards China were behind the protractions. Sobotka previously dismissed this.
According to Pravo, another reason for the protractions was that Czech authorities checked whether any of the asylum applicants is not a secret agent. “The ministry used all possible sources to check these people whether they do not play any games with the Czech Republic. The Czech secret services checked them, too,” the source told the paper.
Chinese media said in the past that this large group of applicants for Czech asylum only pretended to be Christians and that they were in fact illegal economic immigrants.
“A part of them really were not Chinese Christians, but they did not have to,” Metnar said, adding that they would receive asylum irrespective of their faith if they faced persecution by state bodies in their homeland.
The ministry’s press service said it plays no role in the decision making on asylum applications whether the regime in the applicant’s homeland is democratic or not or whether the level of human rights or the economic level are lower than in the Czech Republic.
Czech lawyers of some of the rejected Chinese applicants confirmed that they would recommend their clients to appeal the ministry’s decision.
Metnar said the Chinese applicants are now living in all parts of the Czech Republic and some of them have found jobs.
Three of the Chinese Christian asylum seekers represented by the Organisation for Aid to Refugees (OPU) have had their applications for asylum rejected so far. The OPU represents approximately 30 Christians and it has received a total of five decisions on their submissions.
Lawyer Hana Frankova told CTK on Thursday that the Interior Ministry argued that the applicants failed to produce evidence of facing persecution in China and that they either came as part of a bigger group or started to work soon after arrival.
The OPU will be recommending the unsuccessful applicants to complain against the ministry’s decision.
The Czech Christian Democrats (KDU-CSL) will ask the ministry to explain the details of the case.
According to the ministry’s data, 4370 Chinese had permanent residence and 2472 temporary residence in the Czech Republic in November 2017.
