A Myanmar nun said she was ready to die as she knelt in front of security personnel, pleading with them not to shoot unarmed civilians.
“I thought today is the day I will die. I decided to die,” Sister Nu Tawng told the British newsgroup Sky News.
As Myanmar security forces cracked down on street protests on Feb. 28, Sister Ann Rosa Nu Tawng was determined to protect the people staging peaceful protests against the military coup.
“Just shoot me if you want to,” said the nun.
She added, “the protesters have no weapons, and they are just showing their desire peacefully.”
She recalled that security personnel told her to leave as she was in grave danger, but Tawng insisted she would not go away and was ready to die.
“I have prepared myself. I will give my life for the Church, for the people, and for the nation,” she said.
She told Sky News that one of the officers came over to her and tried to calm her down. He pledged he would not to shoot the protesters, but Nu Tawng said she didn’t believe him.
“I feel like they [the military] are not the guardians of the people,” she said. “They are supposed to protect us but our people have to defend themselves. It’s not safe.”
At least 18 protesters were fatally shot in Myanmar on the day that Nu Tawng made her stand, according to the U.N. Human Rights Office.
The American Catholic magazine Crux has likened Nu Tawng’s actions to Myanmar’s “Tiananmen moment,” referring to the 1989 pro-democracy protests in Beijing, China.
Sister Tawng is from the Sisters of St. Francis Xavier congregation in Myitkyina, capital of Kachin state. The Kachin are mostly Baptists and Catholics who have faced oppression and persecution at the hands of Myanmar’s military for many years.