Searching for the boy with the violin

23 December 2011

Priyath Liyanage goes to Sri Lanka in search of the boy with the violin.

Many musical instruments, like this nadeswaram (oboe) survived the battlefield

As Sri Lanka's civil war came to a bloody end in May 2009, the BBC's Priyath Liyanage was struck by video footage of a boy walking through the war zone holding a violin. Two years on, can this boy be traced and why did he make such a perilous journey with only a musical instrument?

In the last months of Sri Lanka's civil war, nearly 300,000 Tamil civilians - driven out of their homes with the retreating Tamil rebels - were trapped in a small strip of coastal land in the north of the country    Full Story>>>