Every 15 minutes, Sri Lankan state television halts its normal programming to broadcast patriotic images of women in lush tea fields at sunrise, workers building power lines and troops standing guard, all accompanied by a soaring anthem in which a young beauty calls for the country's president to be crowned king.
On the streets of the capital, billboards proclaim, "King Mahinda Rajapaksa: He saved us," beneath a photograph of the president hugging his brother Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, Sri Lanka's defense minister, and apparently glorying in the military victory that this week ended more than a quarter-century of war with the Tamil Tiger separatists.
"Everyone's heartbeat is just like my song and the billboards," said Saheli Rochana Gamage, 21, whose rendition of the anthem has made her a celebrity in this small Indian Ocean island nation. "He should be our president forever. We are happy with a king who can protect our country. Elections don't matter."
At a time when insurgencies elsewhere seem to be expanding, notably in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Rajapaksa brothers were able to do what five Sri Lankan presidents, eight governments and more than 10 cease-fires could not: win a war against a movement that the FBI has called "the most ruthless and efficient terror organization in the world."
Human cost
Despite the elation, however, the human cost of their accomplishment is also becoming clear: Power has been consolidated around a ruling family, a humanitarian crisis looms, and civil rights and media freedoms have been rolled back.
Perhaps the most pressing problem is the situation of more than 280,000 people, mostly Tamils, who have been driven from their homes in recent months, many of them traumatized women and children who were used as human shields or forced to huddle in trenches or the jungle during fighting. They are now living in crowded, highly controlled government-run camps, fenced in by barbed wire. Sri Lanka stands at a crossroads, many here say.
"Sri Lanka has won the war. But now they have to win the peace, which is a very difficult challenge," said Erik Solheim, Norway's minister for international development, who worked for 10 years with the warring parties and brokered a failed 2002 cease-fire. The government must make all communities feel they are Sri Lankans, he said.
"They also have to share local power in the north where many of the Tamils live," Solheim added. "The president will have to rise to the occasion. It's an enormous chance for him to do well or fail."
Human rights groups are especially concerned about a number of children allegedly abducted from the camps by pro-government Tamil paramilitary groups and questioned about links to the Tamil Tiger rebels, according to the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers. The fate of many young Tamil Tiger fighters who surrendered to the armed forces is also unknown. The camps are closed to journalists and even Tamil political leaders.
Lakshman Hulugalle, director general of the Defense Ministry's media center, declined to comment on the treatment of those accused of "terrorism" and defended sealing the camps to journalists.
"It's a private matter for Sri Lanka," Hulugalle said. "The problem here is terrorists fight like civilians. They dress like civilians. Just because they drop the gun doesn't mean they aren't terrorists."
Before a spike in suicide bombings following the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Tigers reportedly carried out two-thirds of all such attacks in the world. India on Thursday marked the anniversary of the 1991 killing of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi by a suspected Tiger female suicide bomber, apparently in revenge for his having sent a peacekeeping force to Sri Lanka.
Solheim said closing the camps to aid workers and journalists "for any reason is completely unacceptable and dangerous for those inside."
"The international community must, and I mean must, get into these camps," he said. "They have to say to Sri Lanka: 'It takes two to tango. If you want reconstruction and aid money, you will open the camps."
Diplomatic pressure
The United States and Britain, two key members of the International Monetary Fund, have said they will link the release of a $1.9 billion bailout loan to improvements in Sri Lanka's treatment of war-displaced civilians.
On Thursday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton telephoned President Rajapaksa to urge political reconciliation and speedy resettlement of displaced Tamil civilians.
Few question the need for security, but civil society leaders worry that the country's mood of blind patriotism will encourage the government to ignore international standards for the treatment of war criminals and Tamils they suspect are rebel sympathizers. At the heart of the insurgency are the long-standing grievances of the country's largely Hindu and Christian Tamils, who make up as much as 15 percent of the nation's population of 21 million. Some Tamils say they have suffered economic marginalization and racial discrimination at the hands of the Sinhalese Buddhist majority.
One key issue will be the timeline for resettlement of the displaced Tamils. If they stay in the camps too long, advocates say, they could be sidelined as the north is rebuilt and could also have difficulty reclaiming their farms.
After a meeting with an Indian delegation Wednesday, Sri Lankan officials vowed to return most of the displaced civilians to their homes this year.
Rajapaksa also called on Sri Lankans on Thursday to make peace. "The celebration of this victory, as deep as it is felt, should be expressed with magnanimity and friendship towards all," the president said in a statement.
Suresh Premachandran, a Tamil leader and a member of Parliament, cautioned that the military victory cannot be considered complete unless Tamils feel they are equal citizens. Sri Lankan police and civil servants often don't speak Tamil, and there is tension over both language and lack of Tamil representation in government jobs.
"We are the people who are elected democratically," said Premachandran, a former rebel. "Even when we start to speak in Parliament, immediately all the people in the ruling party start to shout, 'You LTTE bugger!' and things like that," a reference to the rebels' formal name, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
"The Sri Lankan government does not want to share the power with the Tamil people," he added. "That is the whole reason why this thing started."
Rebuilding a nation
Sri Lanka's government has won over public opinion by painting the conflict as a war against terrorism. Several ministers have already advised the president to hold early elections, and others have urged amending the constitution to allow Rajapaksa to run for a third a term.
Nearly 100,000 people have been killed in the conflict and thousands displaced in this once prosperous teardrop-shaped island. Under emergency regulations introduced in August 2006, the security forces have sweeping powers of search, arrest, detention and seizure of property. They are also permitted to hold people in unacknowledged detention for as long as 12 months, according to Human Rights Watch.
"The president has his work cut out," said Lal Wickrematunge, editor of the independent Sunday Leader newspaper. "Of course, he's very, very popular right now. He's at the zenith of his popularity. He should use that to unite all communities and not even talk of ethnicity, but of rebuilding Sri Lanka."
Wickrematunge's brother, Lasantha, the newspaper's former editor and an outspoken critic of the government, was killed earlier this year and predicted his own death in an editorial headlined "And Then They Came for Me," which he directed to be printed in the event of his assassination. Many here claim government security forces had a hand in his death, an allegation the government denies.
"The Tamil Tigers are vanquished," Lal Wickrematunge said. "But there is still fear. I hope the wind of freedom will blow across our country."
At market fruit stands and at prayer stations near white-washed statues of Buddha, Sri Lankans here expressed optimism. Many said the mood is reminiscent of the sense of unity that followed the 2004 tsunami, which left 30,000 Sri Lankans dead. Sri Lankans of all backgrounds sent rice, blankets and clothing to the victims. They are doing the same now for those in the camps.
In her family's living room, Gamage, the singer, who is Sinhalese, said she had thought a lot about the president's victory speech to the nation, especially his admonition: "The war against the LTTE is not a war against Tamil people."
"I liked that way of thinking," she said.
The Sri Lankan government has produced a stream of war propaganda, including coffee-table books on Tamil Tiger killings and films showing soldiers saving civilians.
But Gamage said her song expresses pride, not propaganda. After hearing Rajapaksa's speech, she said, she translated the lyrics into Tamil. "Everyone should love our king," she said. "We trust him."
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