At least twenty people have been killed in these electricity protests since January. There must be an impartial investigation into these deaths and anyone found responsible for illegal killing should be brought to justice without delay. Any police officers suspected of shooting civilians should be removed from active service pending investigation.

The authorities must ensure the means for farmers to grow their food and maintain their livelihoods. A regular supply of electricity is urgently needed for irrigation to prevent the destruction of the current paddy crop, on which these farmers depend for their survival.

Before you came,
things were as they should be:
the sky was the dead-end of sight,
the road was just a road, wine merely wine.

Now everything is like my heart,
a color at the edge of blood:
the grey of your absence, the color of poison, of thorns,
the gold when we meet, the season ablaze,
the yellow of autumn, the red of flowers, of flames,
and the black when you cover the earth
with the coal of dead fires.

And the sky, the road, the glass of wine?
The sky is a shirt wet with tears,
the road a vein about to break,
and the glass of wine a mirror in which
the sky, the road, the world keep changing.

Don’t leave now that you’re here—
Stay. So the world may become like itself again:
so the sky may be the sky,
the road a road,
and the glass of wine not a mirror, just a glass of wine.

If dreams are thwarted, then yearning must take their place
If reunion is impossible, then longing must take its place.

On the far horizon waved some flicker of light
My heart, a city of suffering, awoke in a state of dream
My eyes, turning restless, still dreaming,
the morning, dawning in this vacuous abode of separation.

We had no food, no electricity, we moved floors in the hotel because the ground floor was flooded. Three people who were staying there passed away after they were electrocuted when they went out on the street.