Five faith-based social care organizations in the Swiss canton of Zurich have published a joint statement strongly condemning the reform of the country's asylum law eproposed by justice minister Christoph Blocher from the right-wing Swiss People's Party. The signatories included the local section of the Red Cross, the Catholic Caritas and a Jewish social care group. They are ojecting to a tightening up of the laws that would worsen the situation for refugees in Switzerland. Blocher's reform, which is targeted at the misuse of the asylum system, would fight a problem that in fact did not exist, the groups argue. Only one in a hundred persons in the Zurich region was a refugee. Switzerland came under strong criticism in the 1990s for closing its frontiers to refugees during World War II.
