Photographs, videos expose Myanmar's military brutality of shooting anti-coup protester

Naypyitaw [Myanmar], April 28 : Digital data by anti-coup protesters in the form of photographs and videos have exposed Myanmar's military brutality. In one case, they may have revealed what happened to a teenage protester whose image has become a symbol of the resistance.
Kyal Sin, who went by the nickname Angel, was demonstrating in Mandalay on March 3 when she was shot and killed. Images of the 19-year-old shortly before her death were published by media around the world, reported NHK World.
Military authorities have denied any involvement in her death. They exhumed her body and claimed to have conducted an autopsy. On state-run television, they said the lead found in her body is different from that which is in bullets used by police. They added that officers could not have shot her from behind because they had been face-to-face with protesters.
NHK World teamed up with experts from Amnesty International to find out what actually happened. Together with collated videos and photos from that day, exact time and location of each image was thoroughly checked. It also tracked down the people who took the images, and heard their accounts of what happened.
The demonstrators were protesting at an intersection of 84th Street and 30th Street in central Mandalay. A live broadcast by Mandalay In Depth News revealed that the security forces arrived at 11:20 am.
One of the people at the protests was live-streaming on Facebook and captured Angel. He told NHK World that he chose to film her because she was so energetic.
At 11:50 am, the military and police fired into the crowd. The protesters, including Angel, began retreating. The security forces continued to push them back.
"We were demonstrating peacefully. Even when we were forcibly pushed back, we would just retreat and not aggressively confront them," one eyewitness told us. "They kept moving forward, firing their weapons all the time."
The protesters retreated to 31st Street. One photograph of that location showed Angel crouching. Another, showed someone being carried, wearing shoes and a wristwatch that match those worn by Angel, reported NHK World.
NHK and Amnesty International tracked down the photographer to extract meta-data embedded in the images, and verified when they were taken. The two images were shot just 30 seconds apart. Angel was presumably killed during that span.
A video that circulated on social media captured the moment she was shot. It showed Angel running from the security forces, then falling after some bangs. The clip is just four seconds long, and the time and location are unclear.
NHK had the sounds analysed by an acoustic laboratory and weapons experts, and they concluded that the sounds were of three gunshots. This suggested that Angel was shot in the back while running from the security forces, which would contradict the military's claims.
The images obtained also showed the weapons the security forces were using against the demonstrators. A weapons expert at Amnesty International said they were clearly lethal weapons, including 12-gauge shotguns and assault rifles.
On February 1, the Myanmar military overthrew the civilian government and declared a year-long state of emergency. The coup triggered mass protests and was met by deadly violence.