Yangon: Nearly a year after he knelt in dust to beg for the Myanmar police not to shoot the anti-coup demonstration, Sister Ann Rose Nu Tawlg still trembling in the memory that day she saved her.
Photos of Catholic nun with a simple white habit, his hands spread, begged with Junta forces in the early weeks of mass protests against Putsch, went viral in the majority of Buddhas and became headlines throughout the world.
Two people at the demonstration in early March in the state of North Kachin were shot dead, with Sister Ann Rose then hurried into a child who was injured to the hospital.
In confusion and chaos he did not know the photo was taken, or the impact would be, he told AFP.
“Only when I arrived at home, I knew that my friend and family were very worried about me,” he said, adding to his mother to scold him crying because he took a risk like that.
“When I saw the photo, I didn’t even believe that I was there to save the lives of people in the midst of chaotic shooting and running,” he said.
“I believe God gives me courage … I myself will not be brave enough to do that.”
Running from the military was something Sister Ann Rose knew from her childhood in the State of Shan who was conflicted in East Myanmar under the previous junta.
The daughter of a priest father and a teacher’s teacher, he was forced to escape his house when he was nine years old, with fear of the army now printed in his brain that he was worried that he was repeated on children today.
“I used to run as a child when they entered the village … every time I see soldiers and police in uniform, I became afraid, even now,” he said.
But on March in Myitkyina, “I can’t think of fear”, he added.
“I just think I need to help and save the protesters.”
In the following days, the crackling of a spinning junta, with Amnesty International then said it had documented cruelty including the use of battlefield weapons in unarmed protesters.
More than 1,400 civilians have been killed and more than 10,000 were arrested, according to local monitoring groups.
No longer has freedom ‘
Sister Ann Rose has found there is a price to pay public to stand out to the junta.
He said he had been detained several times by security forces, who was asked to check his phone and took his picture.
He was not involved in politics but is now too afraid to go alone, he added.
“I no longer have freedom,” the worshipers said.
The nuns – who were previously trained as nurses – now worked in housing camps of people who were transferred in the Kachin state, the location of conflict over the years between ethnic and military armed groups.
Fighting in Kachin and elsewhere in the northern country bordering China recently put – analysts told the insistence of Beijing – but elsewhere with horrible violence continued.
Junta troops were recently accused of being a massacre on Christmas Eve after the remnants of dozens of the body were found on the highway in the east of the country.
Seeing the bloody cycle of clashes and retaliation “it feels like my heart will explode”, said Sister Ann Rose.
But his faith gives his hopes, and goals.
“Thank you to God, I live … Maybe he wants to use me forever.”