Colombo's residents are sporting broad smiles as the Sri Lanka capital braces to host next month’s Asian Athletic Championships, showing how a sports event can improve the mood of a strife torn nation.After years of hostilities that brought bombings and death to the capital, Colombo is set to host the August 9-12 Asian Athletic Championships. This event, which is expected to attract 1,500 athletes from 42 countries, will be the first major international gathering here in decades.Hosting the Asian Championship has been possible because the government and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in February signed a landmark cease-fire after nearly 19 years of hostilities that left more than 64,500 people dead and 1.6 million displaced.Sri Lanka’s athletic officials are happy that a feared boycott by leading nations has dissipated since the cease-fire was signed.Chandra Mohotti, a 56-year-old hotelier whose luxury premises was partially destroyed by a truck-bomb that killed eight people in 1996, is among those celebrating a new era.“I’m delighted that we can now welcome people to Sri Lanka with no fear,” Mohotti said as he checked last-minute details for the championships’ media launch. The city is planning festivities that include traditional dances and kite-flying competitions.Before February, Colombo resembled a city under siege. Soldiers with machine guns stood behind sandbag fortifications. Many roads remained closed and military checkpoints dotted the city of 1.2 million.Residents dreaded the rebels’ most potent weapon — the human bomb. The city’s major hotels were engaged in a price war to attract clients. Five-star hotel were offering bed and breakfast for as low as $30. The rebels have been blamed for 67 major bombings, including the one that targeted Mohotti’s 400-room hotel.“We rose from the ashes of that attack,” said Mohotti, who took nine months to reopen his hotel.The rebels listed 241 “human bombers” since 1987 when the first suicide attacker drove a truckload of explosives into an army camp, killing 40 soldiers in Jaffna, the main Tamil City in the North. Without that continual threat, life has changed in the island nation since the cease-fire agreement was signed on February 22.Road blocks across Colombo have been dismantled and sandbag bunkers have vanished. Night clubs and casinos are back in full-swing. “It’s a great feeling,” said Saubir Sarkar, whose insurance work has made him a regular visitor to Colombo. “Earlier, I always had the fear that something might happen. Now that fear’s gone.”Sri Lanka’s prominent sports event organiser Sunil Jayaweera said the Asian Athletics Championships will be “a remarkable event for Sri Lanka, which had become synonymous with violence and mayhem.”“You see the difference. We are back as the pearl of the Indian ocean,” Jayaweera said. But Sri Lankan authorities are not letting their guards down completely. More than 5,000 policemen will guard hotels and the athletics venue.“We will be taking all security measures to ensure that all goes well,” said police spokesman Rienzie Perera.The problem for the participants may come from an unexpected quarter — mosquitos.Last month, the government closed two schools to clean blocked drains and garbage piles in efforts to curb the spread of deadly dengue fever, which has claimed at least 25 lives here this year.
