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Church of Almighty God Refugees Asylum Claims. 8. The Passport Issue: The Freiburg Decision

In 2019 the Administrative Court of Freiburg, Germany, rejected the argument that asylum applications by CAG members who obtained a passport in China should be rejected.


February 3, 2025


The Administrative Court of Freiburg, Germany. Credits.
The Administrative Court of Freiburg, Germany. Credits.

We offer an English translation, of part of a decision by the Administrative Court of Freiburg, Germany, dated September 12, 2019. It is part of a string of similar decisions rendered by several different German Administrative Courts, and we have selected it because it includes a clear and detailed discussion of the passport issue. This decision also answers the objection that all decisions overcoming the passport issue and granting asylum to CAG members are based on “Bitter Winter,” an “anti-Chinese source”, and on scholars associated with it. The Freiburg decision does not quote “Bitter Winter” and relies on information from German and Austrian agencies (which, in turn, do not quote “Bitter Winter” either).


Having stated that in principle those known or suspected of being CAG members should not be able to obtain a passport in China, the Freiburg Court went on to say: “Under special circumstances, however, it may be possible in individual cases for citizens targeted for political and religious reasons, even if they have been already listed as wanted persons in China, to obtain a passport and a visa and to leave the country by air (in this respect, reference is made to the detailed and accurate evaluation and presentation of the sources of information on this religious group in the rulings of the Karlsruhe Administrative Court: Administrative Court of Karlsruhe, judgments of 04.05.2018 – A 6 K 7906/16 – marginal no. 26 and of 12.06.2018 – A 6 K 436/17 –, marginal no. 20 to 33 and of 12.06.2018 – A 6 K 810/17; see also Administrative Court of Baden-Württemberg, decision of 30.07.2018 – A 12 S 1332/1 8–).”


“Regarding legal departure, ACCORD/Austrian Red Cross (statement of 16.04.2019 on the persecution of the Church of Almighty God, there under para.2, p. 1417) has stated that at the local level there may well be quite undocumented police actions, which do not immediately lead to a registration in the national data base. Until 2018, it was quite easy for Chinese to leave their country. Making it easier to leave the country, even bureaucratically, had also been promoted by the Chinese government. A review of the exit permits practices, also targeting the members of banned religious groups, only started in 2015. Also, the increasingly perfected control methods mentioned by the Australian Foreign Ministry, such as facial recognition, etc., are only mentioned since 2017, so it may be that the applicant, who had already left in 2015, was not yet affected by this. This also applies to the Chinese government’s plans to subject the 100 million internal migrant workers to the reporting system (hukou) (ACCORD, op. cit., pp. 23, 24). In this regard, the German Foreign Office (information dated 5.8.2019 to the Administrative Court of Stuttgart) also mentions the fact that it is not impossible to obtain a passport as long as one is not yet classified as politically sensitive or dangerous, but that this is becoming ‘less and less likely’ ‘because of the intensification of digital’ registration. This also applies to the document required for a change of residence (hukou), where ‘as digital surveillance continues to be perfected,’ checks on changes of residence became ‘routine,’ once everybody was included and data started being exchanged within China.”


“In this respect, it may well have been possible as late as mid-2015 that the surveillance and recording technology at that time did not yet correspond to today’s increasingly perfectioned state of the art. In addition, the Office overlooked the fact that the applicant himself does not claim that he was personally registered in the wanted persons register, or that there was already an arrest warrant against him, and he admits that those wanted by the police on the basis of a search request or even on the basis of an arrest warrant cannot leave the country legally.”


Poster depicting the plague of corruption in China. From Weibo.
Poster depicting the plague of corruption in China. From Weibo.

“Finally, the argument that a legal departure contradicts the existence of a risk of persecution is also contradicted (see Administrative Court of Karlsruhe, judgment of 9.04.2019 – A 7 K 3243/17) by the fact that Chinese border surveillance at the airport is not infallible and collected data are not necessarily forwarded from one office to the next (UNHCR, Universal Periodic Review Germany, p. 9; Administrative Court of Karlsruhe, judgment of 04.05.2018 – A 6 K 7906/16 –). Moreover, the production or procurement of forged or formally genuine but substantively false documents of various kinds has long been possible without particular difficulty throughout China. The overwhelming majority of official documents submitted to date to the German Embassy in Beijing by German authorities or courts in connection with asylum proceedings were found to be forged. Falsified Chinese passports with forged or illegally obtained visas, as well as forged entry and exit stamps, keep turning up (see AA, Situation Report China of June 28, 2018, p. 30 f.). False or forged documents are used for a variety of purposes. According to international document experts, China has the most and the best counterfeiting workshops in the world. Many have the latest technology at their disposal (BFA, Country Information Sheet of the State Documentation China of 14.11.2017, last brief inserted on 05.02.2018 [hereinafter: BFA: Country Information], p. 55; Administrative Court of Karlsruhe, judgment of 04.05.2018 – A 6 K 7906/16 –). Finally, despite the Xi Jinping government’s campaigns in this regard, corruption remains widespread at all levels of officialdom, including in areas heavily regulated by the government, and also in the area of public security (see Austrian Federal Office for Immigration and Asylum, Country Information Sheet of the State Documentation China, complete update of November 14, 2017, latest brief inserted on February 05, 2018, p. 21; see also Administrative Court of Karlsruhe, judgment of May 04, 2018 – A 6 K 7906/16 –). It is equally conceivable that the applicant’s name had not yet been entered by the local police authorities in the nationwide wanted lists, or had already been deleted by them, or that the travel documents used by him were forged, or false in terms of content (see also Administrative Court of Karlsruhe, judgment of 04 May 2018 – A 6 K 7906/16 –). In view of all this, the finding of unhindered departure via the airport does not easily support the conclusion that an asylum seeker was not persecuted at that time.”


“In its Country Report 20 – China, Situation of Christians, as of 9/2019, p. 17, the Federal Office comes to the conclusion, based on the evaluation of sources, that even in China it has been possible for followers of The Church of Almighty God who are already persecuted or threatened with persecution to leave legally with their own documents, not only because there is corruption in China, but also because the wanted persons register and also the exit controls are not always complete. Against this background, it seems quite understandable that the plaintiff was still able to apply for a passport in October 2014 and obtain a visa in April 2015 through the mediation and with the help of friends and other contacts, and finally leave the country legally via Beijing airport (VG Freiburg 2019, 83–9).”


When, as the Freiburg Court did, two elements are considered—first, that “until 2018, it was quite easy for Chinese to leave the country,” and even today the police data base and border control systems in China are advanced but not infallible, and second, that corruption may solve almost all problems—the objections about the passports, although at first sight they looked impressive, are not impossible to overcome.



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