Burma - You're in our prayers

I've been following the protests in Burma with increasing concern over the course of the week and spent time over breakfast reading the coverage in yesterday morning's newspaper. I was almost in tears as I read it. We take voting and free speech so much for granted that many of us don't even bother to vote. In Burma young and old alike were out on the streets, peacefully protesting against not having those rights. What was the reaction of the military leaders? To send out the guns, shooting indiscriminately and killing goodness knows how many people. I have a particular interest in Burma, having taught a student from there many years ago. When she was preparing to return she was very worried and insisted that if we wrote to her we put Myanmar rather than Burma on the address because she said that if a letter arrived with Burma on it would indicate that they were not "loyal" and would cause trouble and possible imprisonment. I wrote to her, and so did several others but none of us ever heard from her again. Every so often I wonder if she's OK, but when there's news like this week's I fear for her and others like her.
I just hope and pray that the visit from the UN special envoy does some good, but it seems that nothing affects the military junta for the good.