Sr Ann Rose Nu Tawng kneeling in front of police officers A religious sister in northern Burma knelt before police last Monday, begging them not to use violent force against protestors.
In a video, Sr Ann Rose Nu Tawng, a member of the Sisters of St Francis Xavier, can be seen speaking March 8 to two kneeling police officers in the city of Myitkyina, the capital of Burma’s northern Kachin State.
Speaking to Reuters, Sr Tawng said: “I begged them not to hurt the protesters, but to treat them kindly, like family members.”
She said that senior officers had told her they were just clearing the street. In the video, the sister and one policeman can be seen touching their foreheads to the ground.
“I begged them not to shoot the children,” she said.
But soon after, “we heard loud gunshots and saw that a young kid’s head had exploded, and there was a river of blood on the street”, she recounted.
Sr Tawng and other witnesses said that at least two protestors were killed and several injured in clashes with police.
The religious sister tried to bring some of the victims to a clinic she runs in the town but was blinded by tear gas.
“Our clinic floor became a sea of blood,” she said. “We need to value life. It made me feel so sad.”
Catholic nuns from a variety of communities in Burma have marched the streets, praying for the protestors and offering them food, according to UCA News.