Since the 1990s Switzerland has had a relatively large Tamil population among Europe, almost all of them being refugees from Sri Lanka.
Many had already been in the country for more than fifteen years due to the Sri Lankan Civil War.
Its contribution to the LTTE to the war effort has proportionately exceeded that of Tamils living in other Western countries.
In 2011 the Swiss police arrested ten former LTTE representatives in the country for threatening, blackmailing and extortion of Tamils of the Sri Lankan diaspora to support the LTTE and the war effort financially.
[10][11] Thus being a minority of the Tamil people living in Switzerland, Zentrum für Migrationskirchen (literally: Centre for migration churches) in Zürich-Wipkingen houses among others the Oikos church that has its origins in Sri Lanka and was founded in 2004.