Kenji Nagai's Last Moments

According to the UK Times Online: The Japanese media is hailing Nagai, the Japanese photog killed in Myanmar yesterday, as a “heroic crusader for truth.” Earlier today, his mother said in a public statement that she had begged her child not to go to Burma, but the videographer told her that it was his job to go to places nobody else wanted to.

Although officials in Myanmar are attributing Nagai’s death to a stray bullet, Japan’s Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura says that footage suggests that the photog was “slain deliberately by Burmese troops.” A video that has been airing on Japanese television stations seems to corroborate this account by showing that Nagai was forcibly pushed to the ground by a soldier and shot point-blank.

Japanese officials are calling on the Myanmar government to investigate the cause of Nagai's death, according to Reuters, and may suspend humanitarian aid to Myanmar if the shooting proces to be intentional. Nagai is the first foreign victim of the swelling Myanmar protests against 45 years of military rule.