Swiss authorities legally challenged for sending Tamil back to torture in Sri Lanka
Swiss Lawyers have filed a compensation case for a Tamil man rejected for asylum in Switzerland, who went back to Sri Lanka only to be tortured and sexually violated again in 2022. The case filed by Emma Lidén and Bénédict de Moerloose, from the law firm Peter & Moreau SA, in collaboration with the International Truth and Justice Project (ITJP), calls on Switzerland immediately to suspend the refoulement of Tamil asylum seekers to Sri Lanka and to re-examine all pending applications, taking full account of the proven risk of persecution.
“At the time when Switzerland’s State Secretariat for Migration (SEM) had multiple concrete pieces of evidence demonstrating the risks incurred by our client in the event of his return to Sri Lanka, they refused to analyse the risk of persecution. By disregarding both the new and alarming information in his file and his clear expressions of distress, they exposed him to severe revictimisation and retraumatisation upon his return to Sri Lanka”, said Emma Lidén.
The case asks for 150,000 Swiss Francs (USD 166,000 approx) in moral damages for ES, arguing that Switzerland’s failure to consider his case properly, in line with obligations under the Convention Against Torture and the European Court of Human Rights, makes the State Secretariat for Migration (SEM) liable, says ITJP in a statement to the press on Tuesday (18).
ES had joined the LTTE, at 17 years old. At the end of the civil war in Sri Lanka in 2009, he surrendered to the Sri Lankan Army with his family. He was detained in Sri Lanka’s most notorious army camp, Joseph Camp and allegedly tortured and sexually abused on a number of occasions. He was then transferred to Boosa Detention Centre where he was hit on the ear causing permanent damage to his hearing. After release, security forces came to Mr. ES’s home on a number of occasions andthreatened to kill him and his family, physically attacking him, says ITJP.
“Mr. ES is not the only case we have seen of a Tamil being deported to Sri Lanka from a European country and then detained and tortured again. Asylum authorities are handling life and death cases and though these cases are complex to assess officials do need to do a more careful job,” said Yasmin Sooka, executive director of ITJP.
The man, only identified as ES, who wishes to remain anonymous for his family’s security, is now in the UK where he was granted refugee status in late 2024. As part of that process in the UK, ES obtained an independent medico legal report that corroborated his account – something that wasn’t available to him in Switzerland. He was also enrolled in a psychosocial support project run by the ITJP in UK, which now faces closure because of the Trump administration’s freeze on funding.
