The Swiss government has said that the need to protect Sri Lankan Tamil asylum seekers with links to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) is decreasing with the improvement in the human rights situation in Sri Lanka.
“Today we acknowledge that considerable progress has been made in the area of human rights, for example in the freedom of expression and assembly. Therefore more restrictive conditions now apply for recognizing the refugee status of journalists, human rights activists and opposition politicians. And the need to protect those with a link to the vanquished Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), is decreasing,” the Swiss website swissinfo.ch quotes the State Secretariat for Migration (SEM) as saying.
However, the Swiss authorities still see “some gaps” in the human rights situation in Sri Lanka and therefore, each application for political asylum will be examined separately to see whether or not there is a case for admission.
In response to concerns expressed by the Swiss and Tamil human rights lobbies that those who get back to Sri Lanka will be tortured and jailed, SEM said that no one who will be tortured will be sent back.
-NIE
-Agencies
