Burma's Bloody September came home to people in Japan with the slaying of veteran freelance photojournalist Kenji Nagai on Sept. 27, 2007 in Yangon during a mass demonstration. The video clip showing him being gunned down by a Burmese soldier at point-blank range was repeatedly aired, arousing public anger and forcing the Tokyo authorities to issue a rare condemnation of the Burmese regime.
This was not a warning shot that went astray — anyone can see that the young soldier fired his rifle into Nagai from less than a meter away. In his last moments, as he lay fatally wounded in the street, Nagai raised his camera in what seems to have been an effort to film his assassin, only to slump to the ground. The authorities in Burma — a name preferred by many over the name Myanmar, which was imposed without approval from the nation's elected representatives by the military junta that took over in 1988 — have not returned this video camera or its contents.
Following Nagai's murder, the Japanese government sought an investigation as domestic media pressured it to pursue the matter. However, there has been no credible explanation of why Nagai was killed — and nobody has been held accountable.