Lin v MCI 2009 FCJ 320

The Court set aside a decision of the IRB that rejected a claim based on religious persecution: 15 For the Board to fairly rely upon general evidence of a diminished risk of religious persecution in China it was critically important to make specific findings about the truthfulness of Ms. Lin's account of the police raid on her church. That is so because the generalized risk facing Christians in China had to be assessed against her particular profile including her past experiences with the authorities. It was not enough for the Board to find that the instances of persecution of individual Christian congregants are now fairly rare if the authorities in her community were of a persecutory persuasion as evidenced by their earlier behaviour directed at Ms. Lin and the others in her church. Her situation may well have been one of increased risk thus taking her case outside of the statistical norm in China, and it was an error for the Board not to have conclusively resolved that point. It was also not a complete answer to Ms. Lin's alleged predicament to find that the local authorities would no longer be interested in her. What the Board needed to ask itself was whether, in her unique situation, she would be at risk of persecution if she returned home and resumed her religious practices.