by Melani Manel Perera

Figures come from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Fewer voluntary repatriations are taking place. Most refugees seek asylum in India, in particular the state of Tamil Nadu. Returnees face police and military controls.

Colombo (AsiaNews) - Sri Lanka supplies one of the highest number of refugees in the world. Last year, 8,521 Sri Lankans sought asylum abroad, this according to a report by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHRC) titled UNHRC Eligibility Guidelines for Assessing the International Protection needs of Asylum-Seekers from Sri Lanka.

Released in December, the study says that the island nation is 12^th highest source country of asylum-seekers claiming refuge in 44 industrialised countries last year. This number is only slightly lower than in 2010, when 8,874 new applications from Sri Lanka. At the same time, the number of refugees seeking repatriation is down.

The report also noted that at the end of last year there were 136,605 refugees from Sri Lanka in some 65 countries; the majority of them in India, followed by France, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Australia, Malaysia, the United States and Italy.

Many factors are behind the Diaspora but they are not explained in the report. In general, older refugees fled the country during the civil war.

Through the UNHRC facilitated voluntary repatriation programme, 1, 728 refugees returned to Sri Lanka from India last year. However, once at home refugees have to deal with Immigration officials, whose action often goes beyond ordinary administration.

For example, in 2011, upon arrival in the village of destination, 75 per cent of the refugee returnees were contacted at their homes by either a military or police officer for further "registration." Twenty-six per cent of them were again visited at home for subsequent interviews.

• sri
• lanka
• refugees
• repatriation
• united
• nations