On Fire

On April 7 an Iranian man self-immolated in Dam Square, Amsterdam in front of horrified onlookers  after his third request for political asylum was refused. A spokesman for the Minister of Immigration and Asylum, Gerd Leers, pointed out that the procedures have been executed properly and that the man had all the remedies at his disposal.

With embarrassment I recall making use of the term self-immolation in a piece of high school protest writing to designate the insufferable state of my cohort  - who, I pointed out, were old enough to be drafted to war, yet incapable of being trusted to leave high school grounds during lunch hour. I'd appropriated the term from that she-devil authoress, Ayn Rand, I was hopelessly under the spell of. With embarrassment comes from such trivialized use of a term denoting an act of such import. And, of course, because I didn't know the fucking definition.

The practice of self-immolation is not new but has re-emerged - by virtue of its impact as a political tool, most notably in bringing about the first instance of regime change in North Africa, in Tunisia. Above is Thich Quang Duc, one of a number of Buddhist monks who immolated themselves in protest of the discriminatory treatment endured by Buddhists under the Roman Catholic administration of President Ngô Đình Diệm in South Vietnam.

On December 17, 2010, a street vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi, set himself afire after an episode in which his wares were confiscated, a female official humiliated him, her aides beat him, and the governor's office refused to hear his case. He died after an agonizing 18 days. He is pictured below - though not at the height of his agony.

In his video, Self-Immolation as a Political Tool, Rodger Baker remarks on the difficulties faced by those in power to counter such an action. Because the action is one in which violence is directed against self - rather than others or infra-structure - the retribution levied against the likes of, say, suicide bombers (who take many people with them) are inapplicable. What's more, public sympathy is clearly on the side of the victim: we all know, to one degree or another, the agony of a burn injury...yet the sympathy for a burn victim pales in comparison to both the courage entailed in subjecting oneself to both the pain of the action and the possibility of surviving it; and the hopelessness of the situation that drives one to this extreme. A suicide bomber may garner considerations of the latter, but because their violence is directed outward, the act is perceived very differently.

In places ranging from Afghanistan to India, the motivations and impacts can be on a much more personal level: many cases of self-immolation involve domestic violence, specifically beatings by husbands and the families of husbands. India is renowned for removal of the self - i.e. the woman is removed, but not by her own hand.