Bern awaits more Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka

Swiss Tamils were among those who protested outside the United Nations headquarters in Geneva on Monday Keystone

Sri Lanka has announced an end to its decades-long conflict, yet Swiss officials are expecting the number of asylum seekers from Sri Lanka to increase this year.

The country has long been a destination for Tamil refugees and many of the Swiss Tamil community have relatives in the north of Sri Lanka. But concerns have been raised that people will not be able to flee.

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa declared his country “liberated” from the Tamil Tigers on Tuesday, after a 26-year-long conflict between the government and the rebel group.

The announcement came one day after the military said that it had killed Tamil Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran. Around 70,000 people are thought to have died during the violence, which saw rebels fighting for an independent homeland in the north.

In a statement the Swiss government said that it welcomed the end of the armed conflict in northern Sri Lanka and called on the parties to engage in political dialogue.

It added the Sri Lankan government should allow humanitarian aid through to the population.

The conflict has already had an effect on asylum requests from Sri Lanka. Requests to Switzerland last year rose to 1,282, compared with 636 in 2007, according to the Federal Migration Office.

Spokesman Jonas Montani said that the trend should continue, but that the number of refugees was not “skyrocketing”.

Each application would be considered carefully. “We are not sending anybody back into a conflict zone,” he said.

A report by the Federal Police Office on Tuesday observed that a worsening of the conflicts in Sri Lanka, as well as Turkey and Iraq had increased the danger of extremist violence in Switzerland.

No peace yet

For its part, the non-governmental Swiss Refugee Council said that although the violence had ended in Sri Lanka, peace was still far away. It said that more than 180,000 people had fled their homes in the north.

“Our main concern is that a kind of revenge could happen. Refugees are now in camps, which are more prisons than camps and they will be screened to look for Tamil Tiger officials,” the refugee council’s Rainer Mattern told swissinfo.ch.

Most people are not able to leave the north. “But I think in other parts of Sri Lanka the search for Tamil Tigers will go on and I could imagine that people who are able to flee will leave and come to Switzerland and other countries,” he said.

The Refugee Council is calling on the Swiss authorities to wait with their decisions on new applicants and to stop forcible returns, while the situation is so severe and unclear. “People who are at risk should be protected,” Mattern said.

Tamil community concerns

Among the Swiss Tamil community itself concern is running high.

“Tamils in Switzerland are worried about relatives living there, and already have relatives who have been killed,” community leader Anton Ponrajah told swissinfo.ch.

Ponrajah, the administrative director of the Centre for Just Peace and Democracy in Lucerne, said that the situation in the north of Sri Lanka was “desperate”.

But he was sceptical about the Sri Lankan president’s speech in which he made overtures towards the Tamil minority for a peaceful future.

“We as Tamils living in Switzerland will never believe that this government will deliver any political package,” said Ponrajah.

Lathan Suntharalingam, a Lucerne local politician of Tamil origin, said he was disappointed that the international community had not intervened in a conflict in which the Geneva Conventions had been broken by both sides and so many civilians affected.

Requests for help

He said that he had received a lot of phone calls from the Tamil community asking for help.

Tamils have been coming to Switzerland since 1970s. They are known to be hardworking and integrated into the labour market, but many have lowly jobs. There is still a strong community feeling.

Suntharalingam said that new Tamil refugees would probably be in a state of shock after losing their political voice with the death of the Tamil leader, whose group they felt had mostly represented them for a long time.

But he said that they would quickly adapt to life in Switzerland and on a political level, would look to the international community.

Isobel Leybold-Johnson, swissinfo.ch

Sri Lankans in Switzerland

Sri Lankans are one of the biggest migrant groups in Switzerland.

There were 27,721 people of Sri Lankan origin in the country at the end of 2008. Between 90% and 95% of them are Tamils.

Since 1973 more than 11,000 Sri Lankans have acquired Swiss citizenship. One-third of the Sri Lankans with permanent residence or Swiss citizenship were born in Switzerland.

The Tamils in Switzerland live mainly in the German-speaking areas, in particular cantons Bern, Zurich and Basel.

swissinfo.ch