Kenji Nagai

The Burma Media Association established an award in Nagai's memory. The award aims to recognize individuals who have reported the truth about Myanmar. The first award, in 2009, was presented to Eint Khaing Oo, a Burmese female journalist.

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

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 Myanmar 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 Myanmar, 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.

"The Group Protesting the Murder of Mr. Nagai by the Army of Myanmar" was founded by Japanese journalists, intellectuals, and celebrities in order to protest Nagai's killing and petition for the return of his camera and tape. By November 2007 the group collected 20,000 signatures, primarily in Japan. On November 26, 2007, the group posted an English version of the letter on their website and started collecting signatures internationally.

Nagai arrived in Myanmar two days before the government began attacking Buddhist monks protesting against the military junta that has ruled the country since deposing the democratic government in a 1962 coup d'état. The protests originally began when the government raised the price of fuel, but grew into mass demonstrations in the tens of thousands, with Buddhist monks leading pro-democracy marches in the streets of Yangon. According to The Times, an associate of Nagai's said he was "relentless" when it came to covering a story, believing that he had to travel to "the places nobody wants to go".

Kenji Nagai (長井 健司 , Nagai Kenji, August 27, 1957 – September 27, 2007) was a Japanese photojournalist who took many assignments to conflict zones and dangerous areas around the world.