SWITZERLAND, February 18, 2006: Tamils first came to Switzerland in the 1980s as refugees fleeing civil war in Sri Lanka and now make up a sizeable community in the country. Although they encountered prejudices at first, Tamils are now regarded as having adapted well to their new home. But they are still not fully integrated. In 1983 the Tamil Tigers group began fighting for a separate homeland for ethnic Tamils in Sri Lanka. The conflict escalated and many Tamils fled abroad to Europe and North America. An estimated 35,000 Tamils now live in Switzerland, of which ten percent are naturalised Swiss. The ex-pat community is now one of the largest after those in Canada, Germany and Britain.
However, the arrival of Tamils in the mid-1980s was not without consequences. The authorities were forced to set up a special refugee authority in 1986 to cope with the unprecedented deluge of Tamil asylum seekers. Prejudice and xenophobia were also commonplace. “The reception was very harsh, very aggressive, and for us it was also the first time we had been to Europe and experienced the cold snow,” said Anton Ponrajah, the head of the Swiss Federation of Tamil Associations. “For both sides it was a difficult situation.”
He said that some Swiss distrusted the Tamils’ motives at first. “In earlier times, when we were in the asylum centres, people thought we were taking their tax money… but later on the government allowed the refugees to work in Switzerland and this tendency changed,” he told swissinfo. The Tamil population have built up a reputation as good workers, particularly in the hotel and catering industry, which has helped integration. The community is also well organised. In some cities there are regular showings of Tamil-language films, Tamil newspapers are freely available and there are now more than 20 Hindu temples and a string of grocery shops across the country.
But appearances can be deceptive, warns Damaris Luthi, an ethnologist at Bern University, who has just published a study on Tamil integration in Switzerland. Luthi says that from a structural point of view, Tamils are well integrated. They know how to negotiate the education and health systems and the workplace. But she says socially and culturally it’s a different story. Contact tends to take place within the community and Sri Lankan values are still valid, especially for the first generation. “The confrontation [between their values and those of] Switzerland and the West in general is still difficult,” Luthi told swissinfo.