Self-immolation: A history of
the ultimate protest
1 June 2016 Amanda Smith ABC Online
The
confronting realities of self-immolation were pushed directly into
Australian minds this year when two asylum seekers on Nauru set
themselves on fire. When did self-immolation become a protest
tactic and what could possibly motivate someone to set themself
alight?
Suicide
protest, in particular setting yourself on fire, is a very uncommon
act. Nevertheless over the past half century it has increased in
incidence around the world.
On 26 April
this year Omar Masoumali, a 23-year-old Iranian refugee in
detention on Nauru, set himself on fire. He died two days
later.
Less than a
week later another detainee, Hodan Yasin, also set herself alight.
The 21-year-old Somalian asylum seeker remains in hospital with
serious injuries.
According
to Oxford University sociologist Michael Biggs, the history of
self-immolation as a modern protest tactic begins on the 11 June
1963 in South Vietnam.
'On this
day in Saigon there was a procession of Buddhists. It stopped in
the middle of the street,' Biggs sayss.
'An elderly
monk called Thich Quang Duc sat down in the lotus position,
crossing his legs. Some other monks poured petrol over him and then
he set himself on fire and burned to death while sitting in this
position.'
It was an
act of protest over discrimination towards Buddhists by the South
Vietnamese government. Importantly, it was organised as a spectacle
and was deliberately intended to attract the attention of the
media. And many foreign journalists present because of the Vietnam
War did witness the event.
'The regime
was headed by Catholics—so the Catholic minority were
discriminating against the Buddhist majority and that was the
original reason for this movement. But of course his action,
because it was so unexpected, because it was so dramatic, because
it was so terrible, then got the attention of the world,
particularly through the iconic image taken by Malcolm Browne,'
Biggs says.
That image
(above) won the World Press Photograph Award for 1963.
'Because
this was such a focus of global attention, we find that this
extraordinary tactic of burning yourself as an act of protest
becomes taken up in other countries by other people.'
Is
suicide protest an act of violence or
non-violence?
While a
suicide bomber unequivocally intends to harm other people as well
as taking his or her own life, the suicide protester is committing
a more ambiguous act.
Simanti
Lahiri, a political scientist at Villanova University in the USA,
says that when people utilise this kind of protest they tend to
talk about it in terms of non-violence.
'They see
themselves as part of a larger tradition of non-violent resistance,
but that said, these are intensely violent acts they are
perpetrating on their own bodies,' she says.
'Suicide
protest has the ability to harness both the morality of non-violent
action with the visceral nature of violent action.'
According
to Lahiri, suicide protest also treads a line between being
regarded as committed or crazy, and this depends, to a large
extent, on how social movements or organisations talk about the act
afterwards.
'If they
don't discuss why they were using it and talk about the individuals
that did it, trying to create emotional narratives, it's very easy
for these acts to be misunderstood or ignored or dismissed as
simply somebody who was depressed or somebody who psychologically
wanted to commit suicide, as opposed to a public act of protest,'
she says.
Religious and cultural traditions behind suicide
protest
Biggs says
there is the Buddhist belief in renouncing the body and
transcending its limitations when a stage of perfection is reached.
There had been historical cases of monks setting themselves alight,
but as a religious act, rather than a political one.
In Hinduism
there is also the notion of fire as a purifying means of disposing
of a body, whereas Christians tend to regard death by fire as
horrific and repugnant. In the Christian tradition fire is
associated with hell.
Lahiri,
whose study of suicide protest has focused on South Asia, had
assumed that it was very much an Indian practice (in the 1990s
there were waves of such protests in India). But she discovered
examples from all over the world, showing there's more to
self-immolation than cultural tradition.
Suicide protests in the western world
In 1969, a
21-year-old student called Jan Palach set himself alight in Prague.
By his side was a letter explaining that self-immolation was the
only protest left now that both Czechs and Slovaks had reached the
edge of hopelessness. Palach became a hero and martyr to the
cause.
'Jan
Palach's case had such resonance, despite the fact that it didn't
come out of any strong cultural background,' Biggs says.
He
attributes this to the widespread anti-Soviet sentiment of most
Czechoslovakians at the time.
'It was at
a time when the repression of ordinary protest had meant that there
were very little other forms of voice that people could use to
express their dislike of the occupation,' he says.
Another,
more recent act of self-immolation also had a powerful (though
probably unintended) impact.
In Tunisia,
Mohamed Bouazizi set himself alight at the end of 2010 and died
from his wounds early in 2011. He was an unlicensed vegetable
seller whose cart and goods were confiscated by the local
police.
After his
livelihood was taken away, he tried to appeal to the municipal
government. When this failed, he set himself on fire outside the
main government building in Sidi Bouzid.
'Bouazizi
didn't seem to have, as far as we can tell, any broader cause for
which he was sacrificing himself,' Biggs says.
'[It]
seemed to catalyse discontent that many Tunisians felt with the
government.
'Therefore
his action, in a way that he might have never intended, became this
kind of catalyst for a massive wave of protests that then
subsequently brought down the government.'
Related: What is the moral response to
self-immolation?
Bouazizi's
death is credited with sparking the Arab Spring.
'Mohamed
Bouazizi wasn't necessarily a pro-democratic protester,' Lahiri
says.
'The
narrative is that he was really frustrated and humiliated, and what
that action did was it alerted a lot of the people in Tunisia who
were already interested in changing the state and had a lot of
anger, into organising.
'But no one
knows if Mohamed Bouazizi was thinking that this action of
self-annihilation would actually lead to ousting President Ben Ali,
which happened very, very soon afterward.'
Nauru protests fail to create change
Not all
suicide protests have the kind of impact achieved by Mohamed
Bouazizi, Jan Palach and Thich Quang Duc.
After the
two cases of self-immolation in offshore detention earlier this
year, the government of Nauru issued a statement saying it was
distressed that refugees were attempting such dreadful acts in a
bid to influence the Australian government's immigration
policies.
Australia's
Minister for Immigration, Peter Dutton, insists that these cases
will not change federal government policy.
So when and
why does suicide protest change attitudes?
'Ultimately
there has to be some type of organisation already in place,' Lahiri
says.
'What these
things aren't good at doing is creating a movement per se and with
many suicide protests, after a while people will just simply forget
about it or it will become that odd thing that happened a few years
ago and doesn't really necessarily lead to any kind of
change.'
Protests
are a mechanism employed by the powerless and usually fail, Biggs
adds.
'Suicide
protests are the most costly: the most extreme action often used as
a kind of last resort. So of course most cases of suicide protests
don't generate a response and are quickly forgotten,' he
says.
'However,
we should never underestimate the ability of someone to use their
own pain and their own suffering as a way of demonstrating the
sincerity of their cause and demonstrating the extent to which they
are experiencing injustice.'