Crucial decisions loom for Sri Lanka

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 Rajapakse: He saved us'' beneath a photograph of the president hugging his brother Gotabhaya Rajapakse, Sri Lanka's defence minister.

“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 the country. “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, the Rajapakse 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 organisation in the world''.

Despite the elation, however, the human cost of their accomplishment is becoming clear. Perhaps the most pressing problem is the situation of more than 280,000 people, mostly Tamils, who have been driven from their homes.

“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 cease-fire in 2002.

“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 Defence Ministry's media centre, 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.''

But Solheim insists the international community “must, and I mean must, get into these camps''.

“They have to say to Sri Lanka: ‘It takes two to tango. If you want reconstruction and aid money, you will open the camps','' he said.

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.''

“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.''

Saheli, the singer, who is Sinhalese, said she had thought a lot about the president's recent 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 Rajapakse's speech, she said, she translated it into Tamil. “Everyone should love our king,'' she said. “We trust him.''