The Spanish National Court denied refugee status and asylum to a woman of Colombian origin since it understands that the extortion she alleged to suffer in her country was solely of an economic nature.
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According to the ruling consulted by EFE, the woman left Colombia on January 23, 2019 and filed an asylum claim at the Provincial Police Station of the National Police in the Andalusian city of Almería (south) on June 28 of that year.
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The plaintiff explained that she had a business and suffered extortion from organized gangs, so she moved to another town where an uncle of hers helped her pay for her nursing studies.
The woman specified that her family member was killed by the guerrillas, which left her in a situation of “vulnerability” as she was unable to resume her studies or open a new business, for which she left her country and went to Chile, and from there to Spain.
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The applicant asserted that there was a “real risk of suffering harm such as the death sentence, torture or inhumane treatment, or serious threats to life or physical integrity”.
However, on July 2, 2020, the Spanish Ministry of the Interior rejected her recognition as a refugee, for which the woman appealed to the National Court.
The court recalls the woman’s account of the “violence” that existed in her neighborhood and how she initially paid the members of a group known as the “paras” (referring to the paramilitaries), but asserts that It “does not reflect persecution or risk of suffering it, for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinions, belonging to a certain social group, gender or sexual orientation”.
In this sense, it points out that “extortion for exclusively economic purposes can take on the characteristics of authentic, protectable persecution when such extortion is not an end in itself but a means to obtain money with which to finance terrorist activities whose purpose is to subvert the political order”.
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However, not all extortion or kidnapping for economic purposes is by itself, and regardless of any other consideration, sufficient cause for the granting of asylum.
“Now, not all extortion or kidnapping for economic purposes is by itself, and regardless of any other consideration, sufficient cause for the granting of asylum,” the court continues, which ensures that “In this case, the extortion is simply associated with economic reasons, since no other purpose is apparent”.
“In the presentation contained in the asylum application, the persecuting agents turn out to be groups of criminals that operate in certain areas of the country, so they are not state agents, and there are no elements from which to deduce that there is an omission on the part of the authorities. of the necessary actions before the criminal acts that make up the story”, justifies the Spanish court.
EFE
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