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.'
Can self immolation at the point of place, time and people arouse massive empathy and moral outrage that drives others to act?
If not, the message of utter hopelessness and desperation has failed!