It’s 3am in Thailand and I cannot sleep.

My partner lies down quietly with our six-month-old baby, Zaw Zaw and I know he is also not able to sleep but he tries, nonetheless, to get at least a few hours. He must wake tomorrow to go to work again and, along with his dedicated colleagues, report the military brutality unleashed on friends and family in Burma for the Democratic Voice of Burma or DVB, a radio and television service run by exiles, one of only a few news agencies able to obtain footage and eyewitness testimony of the tragedy unfolding on the streets and monasteries there.

Today was a harrowing day.

He told of how his heart broke to hear a child monk (or novice) who had been beaten by authorities in a raid early yesterday morning, asking the reporter in his small and shaky voice when his beloved Abbot would be coming back to the monastery to look after him. Many young children are sent to Burma’s monasteries to be cared for and schooled because their parents live in such dire poverty that they cannot feed and educate their children themselves.

Or the sick and dying AIDS patients with nowhere else to go, living in the compound of Maggin monastery, their voices breaking as they recount their terror at what happened through the night — as armed soldiers broke into their former sanctuary, beating people and taking away the monks who had fed and cared for them.

My mind is racing with thoughts about the violent raids that are undoubtedly taking place tonight in Rangoon and other cities across Burma as I type this letter. And of the peaceful protestors and monks brutally killed yesterday — love in their hearts and hope in their cries.

I know that tomorrow will bring more such killings and reprisals, but that again, many thousands of people will come out of their homes and onto the streets to again call for peace, reconciliation and lasting change in Burma.

I am with them in my heart and soul.