Real Courage

The man on the ground in this picture is Nagai Kenji, a Japanese photo-journalist. Actually I should say that he was a Japanese photo-journalist. The military junta that has ruled Myanmar, also known as Burma, for decades has seen the largest anti-governement protests since 1988, when over 3,000 people were killed. Buddhist monks started publicly protesting about a month ago in response to the removal of price controls on fuel that doubled fuel costs. The protests and marches have gained support and momentum with each passing week. The last two days the governement has responded to these calls for redress with curfews, beatings, arrests and now by killing protesters.

This Japanese photographer was covering the protests when soldiers moved in and fired into the crowd to disperse it. He was shot and wounded, during which time he was still attempting to take more pictures. He later died.