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| Sunday, 19 March 2006 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Swiss Tamils look to preserve their culture
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 Tiger group began fighting for a separate homeland for ethnic Tamils in Sri Lanka, claiming discrimination by the majority Sinhalese. 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 per cent are naturalised Swiss. The ex-pat community is now one of the largest after those in Canada, Germany and Britain.
"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." Distrust 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 ? the main Tamil religion - temples and a string of grocery shops across the country. Deceptive appearances But appearances can be deceptive, warns Damaris L》hi, an ethnologist at Bern University, who has just published a study on Tamil integration in Switzerland. L》hi 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," L》hi told swissinfo. "Even for those who have lived in Switzerland for 20 years, alcohol consumption, divorce and sex outside marriage, for example, are still very stigmatised and considered to be immoral." Old ways The second generation is better integrated but many still subscribe to the old ways, even if they have no intention of returning to Sri Lanka, says L》hi.
"If two young people from different castes get married, they are often isolated," L》hi explained. "And even when love marriages are spoken of, they are normally between the same caste." Unions between Tamils and Swiss are very rare. At the end of 2004, of the 18,000 people of Sri Lankan origin who married in that year, only 521 wed a Swiss. "These types of marriages are not well accepted," said L》hi, citing several examples of when Tamil families have cut ties with their children for marrying outside the community. For Ponrajah, integration is still an ongoing process. "It's not a tablet that you can swallow and it will work - it will take time to understand each other. This is the basic thing for integration." Courtesy swissinfo |
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| Produced by Lake House |
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. 
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. 
This can be seen in attitudes towards marriage. Most weddings still take
place between people of the same social caste ? despite moves in Sri Lanka
to outlaw the caste-system. 
