GENEVA: The Swiss were yesterday gearing up for a popular vote on whether to throw out a government move to toughen up the asylum law amid a spike in refugees to the wealthy Alpine nation.
Bern had made controversial changes to the asylum law after applications soared to its highest level in over a decade, including removing military desertion from a list of valid grounds for seeking asylum in Switzerland.
Critics of the changes are asking the country’s 5.2 million voters to voice their opinion on the issue today through Switzerland’s direct democracy system. Opinion polls suggest however that they are likely to fail in their bid. The most recent poll in late May showed 57 percent of Swiss in favour of the tougher asylum rules.
Among the most controversial changes that took effect last September was the removal of military desertion as a valid reason for asylum. That has been the key motive used by Eritreans, who accounted for most applications to Switzerland last year and whose country imposes unlimited and under-paid military service on all able-bodied men and women.
Switzerland currently counts some 48,000 people in the process of seeking asylum, including 28,631 who arrived in 2012. The surge, attributed in part to the Arab Spring uprisings, marks the highest number since the height of the Balkans war in 1999, when nearly 48,000 people sought refuge in the country. AFP
