Sri Lankans were given the day off Wednesday as the government declared a national holiday to celebrate its victory over the Tamil Tiger rebels. Men leaning out of cars, honking and waving the national flag, could be seen cruising through the capital here.
In this city’s ethnic Tamil enclaves, however, the mood was more subdued. Many Tamils, long caught between a government that distrusted them and a rebel movement that brooked no Tamil moderates, welcomed the end of the war even as they nursed doubts about the government’s promises of unity, reconciliation and equality.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa reached out to the country’s Tamil minority, about 12 percent of the population, in his victory speech before Parliament on Tuesday. But his future actions — in forging a political settlement, in rebuilding the economies of war-ravaged Tamil areas, in granting equality to marginalized individuals — will determine whether a postwar Sri Lanka will be acceptable to the Tamils and the Tamil diaspora that financed the rebels.
“If the president does everything he said he would do, there won’t be another Prabhakaran,” V. Sivakumar, a 32-year-old Tamil, said, referring to Vellupillai Prabhakaran, the Tamil Tigers chief whom the Sri Lankan military said it killed on Monday.
Mr. Sivakumar was working Wednesday morning behind the counter of a drugstore in Wellawatte, a Tamil neighborhood recognizable by the presence of the ethnic group’s Hindu temples and kiosks selling flower garlands.
Most shops were closed, and the streets were quiet in Wellawatte, which the authorities have raided in the past in their search for Tamil Tiger rebels or sympathizers. Unlike the majority Sinhalese, who are Buddhist, the Tamils here must report periodically to the police and carry identification papers stating the names of people allowed to live at a particular address.
“The police visit my place every two weeks,” said S. Krishnamoorthy, 27, another worker at the drugstore. “Now that the war is over, we hope that we will be more free to live in Colombo and to travel inside Sri Lanka.”
The country’s Sinhalese majority began discriminating against the Tamils after the country gained independence from Britain in 1949. The situation eventually led to the rise of the Tamil Tigers, a rebel group that practiced conventional warfare but also pioneered the use of guerrilla tactics like suicide bombing. Between 80,000 and 100,000 people were killed during the 26-year war, according to the United Nations.
The Tamil Tigers pressed Tamil civilians here and overseas to finance their efforts and silenced Tamil moderates looking for a compromise with the government through assassinations.
“That obstacle by the name of Prabhakaran is no longer there,” Douglas Devananda, a former Tamil fighter who is now a minister of social services in the government, said in an interview. “So now we will be able to achieve the Tamil-speaking people’s aspirations.”
Mr. Devananda said the government must now “fully implement” a 1987 peace accord, rejected by the Tamil Tigers, which would allow for power sharing and grant greater autonomy to historically Tamil provinces in the north and east.
Tamil leaders also said the government’s handling of the humanitarian crisis in Tamil areas, as well as its accounting of the military’s conduct toward civilians, would greatly influence any reconciliation.
“This is a critical issue,” said R. Yogarajan, national organizer of the Ceylon Workers’ Congress, a Tamil political party. “There are areas, especially in the east, where people have not been allowed to resettle yet. We hope the government will allow that to happen soon.”
Mr. Yogarajan said he was resigned about the Sri Lankan military’s reported shelling of Tamil areas where civilians had been trapped, actions that have drawn international criticism.
“We have to work toward the future, not look back,” he said. “It’s difficult. But what else can we do?”
At the Sinthu Cafe in the Wellawatte area, residents sitting at the small restaurant’s three tables still appeared apprehensive about speaking out loud about the Tamil Tigers, even though its leadership was apparently wiped out early this week.
“I’m happy the war is over, but I can’t say what other people feel,” said P. Sasikumar, 29.
Like many in the neighborhood, the restaurant’s owner, P. Baskaran, 34, came from Jaffna, a town in this island nation’s northernmost area. Government forces captured the Jaffna area from the Tamil Tigers in the 1990s, but Jaffna remained behind a rebel-held section of territory.
“The road to Jaffna was blocked, so the economy there stagnated,” said Mr. Baskaran, who moved here two years ago because he could not find work in Jaffna. “Now that the war is over, the government needs to develop Jaffna economically. If it does that, there won’t be any problems.”
At a bookstore nearby, the owner, N. Panchadsaram, 57, who was also from Jaffna, said he was optimistic about the future. Of course he had grievances, including the fact that the police station in his neighborhood had few, if any, Tamil officers.
“These are all political problems,” he said. “In our private lives, we Tamil and the Sinhalese live together peacefully. We just need a change in this country’s political structure.”
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