In the local office of Sri Lanka's national Human Rights Commission here in this eastern seaside town, they have statistics: Ninety-eight people were abducted in this area last year, snatched off the streets by the infamous white vans with no licence plates that are used by government security agencies. Eighty-five other Tamils simply disappeared. At the commission they have case files and police reports.
But none of the staff will talk about them. "We are helpless," one staff member said apologetically, ushering a visiting journalist out of the office. "We would like to help the people but we have to be afraid for our lives, too."
And who do they fear at this government office?
The government.
Eastern Sri Lanka offers insight into what the north of the country - the area that until weeks ago was held by the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam - will soon look like. The Tigers have lost all but a tiny portion of their territory to a punishing air and ground assault by government forces, launched by a president determined to end the country's 25-year-old civil war to win elections in April. He promises peace and development for the civilians of the north, where long-time oppression of the minority Tamils by the Sinhalese-dominated government helped to create a powerful secessionist movement.
Until 2006, this swath of the east was also held by the LTTE. But infighting within the Tigers, which Canada and many other nations list as a terrorist organization, led to a split and the rebels of the east soon allied themselves with the government.
Today the government holds up Eastern Province as a model of its magnanimity, pointing out that elections were held there shortly after its military control was established, and that a Tamil party headed by ex-rebels won the region.
"The President has shown his commitment to honourable peace in Eastern Province; those people were given the chance to elect their own people. They know they are being represented, not neglected," said Lakshman Hulugalle, spokesman for the Ministry of Defence.
But international observers said the poll was marred by rigging, violence and intimidation, and the provincial government is dominated by ex-fighters from the breakaway Tamil faction who have little support from the population, which resented the rebels' often oppressive rule. Indeed the Chief Minister of the province is Sivanesathurai Santhirakanthan, better known by his nom de guerre Pillayan, which he acquired when he joined the Tigers as a 14-year-old fighter. Today he is ostensibly the most powerful man in the province, a claim he rejects with a small, tight smile.
"The government is eliminating terrorism, offering a political solution, and that is how I have been elected Chief Minister," he began in a recent interview in his office, then added, "I have become a chief minister but I have not received powers from Colombo. For the past six months Colombo says, 'This is not the right time to devolve powers.' They say they will give them in time."
Most local and international observers - even Mr. Hulugalle of the Defence Ministry - predict that when the LTTE loses control of all its territory in the north it will launch an underground, Iraq-style insurgency. The Tigers have since the first days of their fight used suicide attacks on civilians, including those at prayer in places of worship, as one of their standard tactics.
"The LTTE will go to the jungle as resistance, and even if there are a few hundred of them, the government has to maintain a military presence in the north; their residual force will require suspicion of all Tamils," said Jehan Perera, head of the National Peace Council. "The situation is likely to be the same or much worse than in the east - the soldiers, the questioning of people, the difficulty of getting private business to invest there."
And the peace of the victors will be a cold one for the Tamils, he predicted. "They say they will be doing infrastructure, building roads and that kind of thing, but it will all be done by the central government, and this conflict grew in the first place from the view the central government is Sinhalese and doesn't take their interest into account," he said.
