It looks like a normal prize-giving ceremony at a normal school. Children are arranged by age on rows of seats in the barn-like hall. They wait patiently, a burble of chatter rising on the boiling air towards the tin roof. On a raised concrete dais is a small table on which sit the books to be presented as prizes. A teacher reads out the name of each winning child who moves shyly to the front to collect their prize with a gracious bow.

But the school is not ordinary. Its children’s lives have been tugged, tossed and sometimes shattered by the civil war that has raged in Sri Lanka for the past 26 years. Since the conflict ended in May, the number of pupils, all Tamil, at the Mullipothane Vigneswara school near Trincomalee on the eastern coast has risen sharply as parents settle back to something like a normal life.  Full Story

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