Thank you so much for inviting me

because this is really a great honor to speak in this school of law.

I'm not a lawyer, unfortunately,

and I would appreciate if I would be.

But I worked for many years as a diplomat,

but I've taken some time off my duties.

I'm here not in my capacity as a diplomat

but more like somebody who is working for the NGO,

who is protecting the refugees.

I worked many years for the international organization,

so I was able to somehow learn a little bit about the international law.

So, Massimo was very ambitiously saying

that he can answer the question

why the members of The Church of Almighty God are not accepted as refugees.

It's an open question to all of us: Why?

And my presentation today

is trying to show you the arguments

that these people should be accepted as refugees.

Because clearly they are persecuted in China,

clearly they are caught beyond the law.

As you remember,

it was in the previous presentations

that mentioned the Criminal Code of China, Article 300,

where it clearly said that they should be persecuted.

If they are caught

so they will be put in prison for three to seven years or more.

So it's clearly a persecution.

Even further these people are not only persecuted,

because persecution in a way might be mild persecution, right?

You are not able completely to practice your faith,

but we have quite many examples of the people who were even tortured.

Because they are really destroyed for life

and carried very deep trauma to this very day.

So, the arguments for the members of The Church of Almighty God

is, first of all, those people are not migrants.

They are not seeking jobs,

and they are not seeking financial assistance.

Because it's very important that

these people live in a very closed community and they help each other.

So even here you see some people

who are the brothers and sisters of that group.

For them, there is really a question of the protection.

The membership is very easy to define,

because they are so close to each other.

They keep in touch, in particular those who flee China,

so they really stay in touch all the time to help each other.

But the context all of you understand right now

is very unfavorable (for them),

because we see what is happening in Europe—

all this bad discourse that is against the refugees.

Even the media very often is involved in the bad or fake news.

Because the people who flee in particular in Europe,

we see not all of their images are refugees.

Most of them are illegal migrants

who just paid money for the human traffickers

with the aim to cross the borders and enter Europe.

Some of them are pretending to be refugees,

and some of them are refugees.

So it's a very difficult situation.

And there is another problem that, I believe in Australia is the same, we have right now

is that far rights parties are slowly becoming more and more strong,

and their discourse somehow reach people,

and kind of radicalization of the society is taking place.

The process is slow,

most perhaps at the beginning or in the middle of the process.

In this context,

it's very difficult, in particular seeing the images from Europe,

for the authorities to really distinguish who is who

and give the protection to people who really need the protection.

As we already saw from the previous presentations

that the members of The Church of Almighty God, they really need protection

because they will be persecuted (if deported).

The situation right now is that

only in three countries

they don't have the major problems to get the refugee status.

They are the United States, Canada, and Sweden.

Unfortunately,

in other countries like South Korea and many European countries

it is very difficult for them to get the status,

and most of them are rejected on the ground of many reasons.

First of all,

authorities very often don't recognize that they are persecuted,

that this group is really persecuted.

Sometimes the argument is that it is not a religion.

In France, there are a few people put in jail

but most of the cases they are still at least …

But at the same time,

these people live in a permanent fear and insecurity.

My aim today

is to remind of the definitions of International Law

and the countries which signed the conventions.

So we abide by the international norms,

and I believe it's a very good place here

to remind of these documents and definitions which should be really implemented

and that people should be granted refugee status.

So, first of all, it is who is refugee.

We have International Refugee Law,

entire sets of the document, right?

So then here you see clearly the definition on who is the refugee.

And as you see in the definition,

a refugee is the person who is outside his or her own country

owning for fear of persecution on protected grounds.

And protected grounds— I appreciate your introduction very much today,

is that religion or even larger,

because I always prefer the freedom of consciousness or freedom of belief.

It's not important what we believe,

(the important point) is we have the inherent right

to believe in what we believe.

So, religion is very much part of the protected ground.

So the religion, as I mentioned, is that they always use.

The scholars like Massimo Introvigne,

they try to define what is a religion to defend a religion,

but in fact, that is not important.

If they are persecuted because of their beliefs,

there is already a persecution and there is a protected ground.

My understanding of the concept is that it is also included.

As you see,

United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights

(I believe as now they are celebrated 70 years

for this very important declaration)

is that everyone has the right to the freedom of thought,

consciousness and religion.

What is really very important for me

and I believe it's always underlined in the Human Rights Council in Geneva

that it is an individual right.

So, we are not defending religion,

we are not really defending the dogma,

and it is an individual right to protect.

We defend person's right to believe and confess what they have.

And then in the same declaration we have Article 14,

“Everyone has the right to seek

and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.”

The origin of International Refugee Law is,

everything started just after the Second World War,

when the 60 million refugees were in Europe,

and then we started to create norms, defining and looking for it.

For this reason,

in 1950 we created United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees—UNHCR.

Then we also created in 1951 the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugee.

Because the first document was limited to geography of Europe,

in 1967 we have the Protocol

which now extends the scope of Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees.

But being lawyers, you know better than me

that very often the convention is not enough.

We need interpretation and etc.

So, in 2004 UNHCR prepared the guidelines

where we have a lot of help

on how to interpret certain aspects in considering the refugee questions.

As we well know and believe right now when you look around the world,

this is really the trends they're taking in many countries.

There is a clear connection:

If in a country there is a lack of democracy, lack of rule of law,

it is the natural way to violation of human rights and freedoms.

So, China is the case, Russia is the case, Turkey is the case.

So when there are violations of human rights and freedoms

certainly the intolerance starts to rise,

and then another level is discrimination,

and then is persecution and even maybe a torture.

And I believe in the case of The Church of Almighty God,

it is exactly we have this tendency of spiraling down

slowly, slowly into the situation that is very dangerous.

So, that is the remainder of the persecution.

The persecution is the systematic mistreatment of an individual or group

by another individual or group.

The most common forms are the religious persecution as we see,

racism, and political persecution.

Non-refoulement, that is humanitarian law, international humanitarian law.

The states should be very careful

and not return the people who might be persecuted in their country.

As I mentioned, in some countries,

there is, for instance, the authorities when they analyze the cases,

sometimes there are doubts

that perhaps The Church of Almighty God is not exactly the religion,

or people are not practicing or religious enough.

If you are a leader,

then perhaps the refugee status will be granted,

but if you are not a leader, so you don't have the right.

Particularly in the case of the members of The Church of Almighty God,

not all of them can prove that they were persecuted personally.

But for instance, the case in the situation in Australia, specifically,

is that people applied for the refugee status,

but only few got the refugee status

because they were able to prove they were tortured and persecuted personally.

But my argument is that,

what about those who received the information that,

for instance, tomorrow they will be arrested.

So they are not persecuted yet because they've fled before they were arrested.

The law, Criminal Code Article 300, says

that if they will be caught, they will be arrested.

There is even one more important detail,

which is that even around the country there are places you have banners

encouraging people to denounce the members of The Church of Almighty God.

(There is) a reward for the leaders—

I am sorry, I don't remember the numbers—

it is a bigger reward,

and for the simple members, it is the smaller reward.

So it's the clear basis of persecution.

My presentation was to encourage you, as lawyers,

to remember these arguments (why they should be protected)

and not forget the people who really need imminent protection.

Thank you so much!