Kenji Nagai - Death

Death

Nagai had been in Burma covering the anti-government protests since Tuesday, September 25. On Thursday, September 27, Nagai was photographing the protests near the Traders Hotel, a few blocks away from the Sule Pagoda in downtown Yangon, when soldiers opened fire on demonstrators, killing Nagai and reportedly injuring another foreign journalist.

Reports initially stated that Nagai was hit by stray bullets fired by soldiers or possibly shot from the front. The "stray bullet" explanation was proposed by the government of Burma as an explanation for Nagai's death. However, video footage obtained by Japanese television appears to show a Burmese soldier shoving Nagai to the ground and shooting him at point-blank range. A still image photographed by Adrees Latif showed the soldier standing over Nagai, who was sprawled on the ground and still clutching his camera. This photograph appeared on the front page of The New York Times on September 28, 2007. A subsequent shot showed Nagai's body sprawled in the street as the soldier walked away. Judging from the patch, the soldier responsible is believed to be from one of the Light Infantry Divisions (possibly LID 66) in charge of crowd control in Yangon at the time of protests.

At the Japanese embassy in Burma, a physician established the trajectory of the fatal bullet that killed Nagai, determining that the bullet entered Nagai's chest from the lower right side and pierced his heart before exiting from his back.

On October 8, new footage showing how a Burmese soldier apparently confiscated fallen Nagai's video camera was revealed on a Japanese news show. Adrees Latif's photo, depicting Nagai sprawling on the pavement before his death, won the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography in 2008.