A Sikh rapper with 40,000 followers on TikTok has failed in his bid to remain in New Zealand despite fears of revenge in his home country after he insulted another artist in one of his songs.

The man applied to the Immigration and Protection Tribunal for protected refugee status earlier this year after he said he’d received threatening messages from people in India and feared for his life if he was forced to return.

The tribunal declined his appeal in a recently released decision and upheld an earlier ruling from a refugee and protection officer who refused his application for protected status.

The man, whose name was suppressed by the tribunal, came to New Zealand nearly 10 years ago to study. In his spare time he wrote rap music, recording some of it with a couple of people he met through work.

The following year he wrote a number of songs and uploaded them to the social media site TikTok and quickly gained more than 40,000 followers. However, his account was banned after a number of people complained about his lyrics which mainly focused on Punjab gun culture, poverty and the Caste system and racism in India.

In 2018 the man’s New Zealand Visa expired but it wasn’t until 2021 he lodged a claim for protected status. He wrote on the form that he feared harm from politicians and religious persons in India because he’d posted songs about the farmers’ protests and other social justice and religious issues.

Two months later he uploaded a new song to another platform that praised another Punjabi rapper while also including derogatory references to another artist. Although this artist was not named the tribunal noted that any knowledgeable listener would know whom the man was referring to.

After uploading this song he received threats and insults from fans of the other artist with some of them calling his personal cellphone number. One of the most-recent threats he received in January this year said “we’ll see you when you’re back in India”.

The next month he uploaded another video which was purportedly a “challenge” to the same artist he’d insulted in the previous video.

The man’s father gave evidence before the tribunal from India and said he’d been approached by people asking for him to take the videos down which he’d passed on to his son.

His mother also gave evidence that she and her husband had received threatening phone calls in the wake of her son’s music being uploaded to the internet.

In its decision the tribunal acknowledged that the man could not be expected to self-censor his views in his music.

“However, the fact that all of the appellant’s songs posted to YouTube remain viewable by anyone wanting to view them, including persons who have been upset by those songs, significantly informs the tribunal’s view of the actual nature of the risk faced by the appellant,” it said in its decision.

“After all, feuds and ‘dissing’ other artists, as illustrated by the online spat between [redacted] are part of the rap music genre. That the appellant’s online rap songs generated both positive and negative responses from viewers is hardly surprising.”

The tribunal also looked at the recent gang murder of a high-profile Indian rapper as context for escalating tensions against musical artists in the country.

That artist had millions of views on songs that have been uploaded to YouTube. By contrast the tribunal noted that the applicant’s songs had roughly 30,000 views each.

“These numerical comparisons are not intended to diminish in any way the appellant’s musical endeavours or achievements but do serve to further inform the Tribunal’s assessment of the risk of serious harm that he faces in India…”

The tribunal went on to say that unlike the famous murdered rapper, the applicant doesn’t have any gang links and would not be exposed to the same level of danger.

It declined his appeal for protected refugee status.

Jeremy Wilkinson is an Open Justice reporter based in Manawatū covering courts and justice issues with an interest in tribunals. He has been a journalist for nearly a decade and has worked for NZME since 2022.