Man scared of family sought refugee status

A man who feared getting killed overseas after not marrying a woman he had sex with can stay in New Zealand.

The 33-year-old Fiji citizen failed to get refugee status but was declared a ‘‘protected person’’ after persuading a tribunal he would not be safe in his country of birth.

A newly published Immigration and Protection Tribunal decision showed the man met his sweetheart at a Fiji high school where boyfriend-girlfriend relationships were banned.

After graduating, he and the woman had sexual relations, and she expected they would get married.

The man, from a Hindu family, moved to New Zealand in 2007 to work as a car technician.

Back in Fiji, his parents visited the young woman’s mother to arrange the marriage.

But tribunal member Virginia Shaw said the man then decided the woman ‘‘was not the right person’’ for him to marry.

Eventually he broke off the relationship.

Then he said the woman’s relatives started threatening him, and his own family felt dishonoured.

The man thought people in the community were angry because he’d had premarital sex with the woman.

The man’s last work visa expired in August 2010, and his visitor visa three months later.

But he stayed on illegally.

His deportation was ordered in November 2017.

He said threats from his ex-girlfriend’s family made him scared to return to Fiji, and he lodged a refugee claim after his ex said her family might kill him.

The Refugee Status Branch declined the claim in June 2019, and the man broke the news to his parents.

Two months later, his parents’ farm was attacked, sugarcane burned, and livestock set loose.

The man claimed Fiji police would not protect him.

He was declared a protected person under the ICCPR.

The woman has since married someone else.