Nedskydningen af den japanske fotojournalist Kenji Nagai under Burmas ‘Safran revolutionen’ for seks år siden er stadig uopklaret. Den nye regering vasker hænder, og Japan fokuserer på handel og investeringer i det ressourcerige land, skriver nyhedsmagasinet The Irrawaddy fredag.
YAGON, 27. September 2013: 50-year old Kenji Nagai was shot dead in downtown Rangoon while filming an army crackdown on protests against military rule, demonstrations that were becoming known worldwide as “the Saffron Revolution.”
With foreign media banned from Burma and local press heavily-censored, Kenji Nagai’s images of the crackdown were one of the few on-the-ground sources of information on what was happening as the army moved to crush the nationwide monk-led protests.
Lack of answers
As for who shot Kenji Nagai, and what became of his camera, there have been no clear answers from the Burmese Government in the intervening six years. Was he killed by accident or was he targeted?
Yan Naing, a video reporter for the then-banned exile media group Democratic Voice of Burma, was filming around the area where Kenji Nagai was shot six years ago.
“A soldier standing beside Kenji Nagai fatally shot him,” he told The Irrawaddy.
No comment
According to The Irrawaddy, Ye Htut, now Deputy Information Minister and spokesman for the President’s Office, says that Kenji Nagai’s death took place under the previous military government and therefore he could not comment directly on issues such as the fate of Kenji Nagai’s camera.
“As far as we know, when the body was found, the camera was already missing,” he told The Irrawaddy
Toru Yamaji, a representative of APF News, the agency for which Kenji Nagai was filing footage from Burma’s 2007 upheavals, says that the circumstances of Nagai’s death have not been cleared-up.
Even Burma’s transition to a more open form of government has not helped, the APF spokesman says.
“Burma has changed greatly, but our time has stopped since six years ago. I feel sad,” he said.
Kenji Nagai’s case became something of a cause celebre among Burma’s long-oppressed media.
Eaint Khaine Oo, a Burmese journalist and winner of the inaugural Kenji Nagai Award, established in 2009 to remember the murdered photojournalist, says that her country’s government has an obligation to return Kenji Nagai’s missing camera.
“The government did not live up to its responsibility to give back the camera,” said the reporter, who was jailed by the military junta for her coverage of the 2008 Cyclone Nargis.
Frosty relations
Relations between Japan and Burma turned frosty in the aftermath of the killing, with the Japanese halting aid and seeking an explanation for the shooting as well as the return of Kenji Nagai’s camera, which disappeared, presumed stolen, sometime after he was shot.
But now Japan is seeking a lead role in Burma’s economic makeover, writing off almost two billion US dollar of Naypyidaw’s debt and pledging loans for large-scale infrastructure projects – such as a 2.400 hectare Thilawa industrial zone planned outside Rangoon – that will perhaps support the building of Japanese factories in the low-wage country.
Some observers believe these developments have influenced Japan’s position on the case of Nagai’s death.
Shawn Crispin, Southeast Asia representative for the Committee to Protect Journalists, told The Irrawaddy that “it seems increasingly obvious that Japan does not want Nagai’s case to undermine building strong commercial ties with the new, market-opening government.”
