A middle-aged man holding a camera, lifted off his feet by a shot fired by a soldier at point-blank range as protesters flee in panic. He rolls onto his back, fatally wounded, still holding his camera up in one hand. A Reuters photographer would later win a Pulitzer prize for capturing that moment.
The man was Kenji Nagai, a veteran Japanese video journalist. He was killed on 27 September 2007, at the height of the so-called Saffron Revolution, mass protests led by Buddhist monks in several cities in Myanmar against a military regime which had ruled for 45 years and run the economy into the ground.
His camera, missing for 16 years, has now resurfaced, bringing some closure to his family who flew to Bangkok this week to receive it.
“I think my brother threw himself right into the turmoil of the Saffron Revolution, convinced he could help Myanmar by letting the world know what was happening,” his sister Noriko says.
“I don’t think of him as a hero even though he lost his life. I would prefer people to remember him as a journalist who was willing to keep fighting.”
A warning – this story contains the Pulitzer-winning photograph of Kenji Nagai moments after he was shot.
By the time Nagai, who was on assignment for the AFP, arrived in Myanmar the protests had been going on for six weeks, the first significant challenge to military rule for nearly 20 years.
They had escalated in early September when monks across the country, reacting to the assault of monks by soldiers in the town of Pakkoku, had turned their bowls upside down and refused to take alms from military personnel – a powerful act of defiance.
Source: bbc.com
