History of Self-Immolations

Self Immolations always shock the consciousness of the nations, what is their history?

A few weeks ago, US Airman Aaron Bushnell calmly walked towards the Israeli Embassy in Washington DC, holding his camera, he said, “ I am an active duty member of the United States Air Force. I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I’m about to engage in an extreme act of protest. But compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it is not extreme at all…”

He set the camera down, and walked in front of gates of the Israeli embassy. He poured a fluid over himself and lit himself on fire - all the while screaming “Free Palestine.”

Since this event many have asked me about self-immolation as a protest and its effects. It looked into the history and it is very deep as it is ancient. But looking through historical reports, many incidences of self-immolation goes completely unnoticed by the public. For example, in December, a woman, draped in a Palestinian flag, set herself on fire in front of the Israeli consulate. Besides a few local news blurbs, it garnered little attention.

Others capture the world’s attention, like Aaron Bushnell. Since his self-immolation, there is constant buzz on social media. Artists in China have paid homages. World leaders have offered solidarity and condolences. There have been protests around the nation including that of military veterans. No one knows why some self-immolations captivate the world, while others go unnoticed. Perhaps it is the presence of a camera.

Self-Immolation is nothing new as political protest is nothing new. It has been described in Chinese buddhist texts as early as year 396

Fayu 法羽 was from Jizhou 冀州.2 At the age of fifteen he left home, and became a disciple of Huishi 慧始 (d. u.). [Hui]shi established a practice of austerities and the cultivation of dhūta. [Fa]yu, being energetic and courageous, deeply comprehended this method. He constantly aspired to follow the traces of the Medicine King and to burn his body in homage [to the Buddha].

At that time the illegitimate ‘Prince of Jin 晉’ Yao Xu 姚緒 (fl. late fourth century) was occupying Puban 蒲坂. [Fa]yu informed Xu of his intention. Xu said: “There are many ways of entering the path, why do you choose only to burn your body? While I dare not firmly oppose it, I would be happier if you would think twice [lit. think thrice].” But [Fa]yu’s intention was resolute. Next, he consumed incense and oil; he wrapped his body in cloth, and recited the “Chapter on Abandoning the Body” (sheshen pin 捨身品). At its conclusion he set fire to himself.

The religious and laity who witnessed this were all full of grief and admiration. At the time he was forty-five years old.

And this practice has continued throughout the years. But, perhaps the most famous case of self-immolation is that of Thich Quang Duc in Vietnam. On June 11, 1963, the Vietnamese monk climbed out of his car in front of Saigon’s presidential palace, sat on a cushion, poured gasoline over himself and set him on fire in front of a crowd. AP journalist Malcolm Browne captured the image for the world to see.

This one act, in its full horror was captured on a camera for everyone to see. Duc was engulfed in flames as he sat quietly. As per their usual tiresome mantra, the US claimed that they were defending the “Free and Democratic” South Vietnam against the godless, authoritarian communists. However, as the word of Duc’s martyrdom spread, people saw the reality in South Vietnam. There was nothing resembling a Democracy there and there was to Freedom to be had.

During the long battle for independence let by the Vietnamese Nationalist Forces (Vietminh), France tried to maintain their colonial holdings by “agreeing” to an independent Vietnam with former emperor Bao Dai as Prime Minister. Most Vietnamese saw Bao Dai as a collaborationist and continued to fight.

After the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, Vietnamese nationalist forces had pushed their French colonizers to their last stand, the Geneva Conference was convened to determine the status of the former French colonies in the region. After 75 days of grueling negotiations, they had reached an agreement:

• Recognition of three new countries: Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam.

• Moving the French troops to the south of the 17th parallel and creating a demilitarized zone along that border.

• Hold an referendum on unification by 1956.

Bao Ding, realizing his unpopularity, handed over leadership to Ngo Dinh Diem, in 1955, establishing the South Vietnamese puppet regime. Instead of freedom, this government used peasants as slave labor to build strategic hamlets and roads. Democracy was rejected when the South Vietnamese government refused to hold an unification referendum claiming that they did not sign the treaty, and it was France who signed the treaty. Instead of people getting to chose their government, Diem installed his relatives and cronies to head local provinces, who extorted the peasants at every turn.

Hungover from the days of feudalism, South Vietnam had large agricultural land holders who employed most of the country’s peasantry with inhumane wages. The South Vietnamese government was forced to do land reform in order to gain some modicum of popular support, but the largest landowner, the Catholic church was exempt from holdings. Two thirds of all village heads were Catholic and some villages had mass conversions to catholicism in order to receive the most basic aids. In order to construct their vast network of highways, they forced villagers, who were already impoverished, to do corvee labor for months on ends. Buddhists were drafted, Catholics were exempt from the onerous burden.

When setting up village defense militias, only Catholics were given arms and buddhists were excluded. Diem once told a high-ranking officer, “Put your Catholic officers in sensitive places. They can be trusted.” Catholic churches even ran their own private militias with impunity in the Diem regime.

After nearly 8 years of continued systematic discrimination, the final straw that broke the camel’s back occurred on May 6, 1963 in Hue. Diem’s older brother Ngo Dinh Thuc was the Bishop there. He returned to Hue after he presiding over a mass in Quang Tri Province, it was two days before Vesak (a Buddhist holiday) and he saw buddhist flags flying all over the place on his return journey home. Thuc, immediately informed the governor of Hue about his rage, and after getting confirmation from the Presidential office, the governor of Hue immediately prohibited flying the Buddhist flag. The ban on the flag, during Vesak, angered the local population. During Vesak, the head monk, Thich Tri Quang, spoke with outrage of the Buddhist flag prohibition and the general discrimination, causing thousands of people to protest outside the local radio broadcasting studio. They demanded that Thich Tri Quang be heard, the radio authorities refused. Local policie and militaries were sent in with tanks and they began to fire on the crowd. There were two explosions, which the Diem government tried to blame on the Viet Minh, and 8 people were killed.

The events at Hue set off a series of protests by Buddhists in many cities including Saigon. The government used many Catholic paramilitary forces to violently repress the Buddhists. It was during this time that Thich Quang Duc, self-immolated, followed by six other monks and nuns in the upcoming weeks.

As the ever-present US propaganda machine tried to maintain that it was the “godless communists” who oppressed religions, South Vietnam’s new religious fervor and draconian crackdown’s set ablaze the the narrative. Diem and South Vietnam said and did all the wrong things. Instead of coming up with an appeasement gesture, his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, who was the head of the secret police in Vietnam said, “If the Buddhists want to have another barbecue, I will be glad to supply the gasoline.”

His brother Nhu, continued an all-out assault on the Buddhist population, viewing them as not loyal enough to the South Vietnamese government. He first began with mass arrests of Buddhist religious officials. But, this only enraged the population and the unrest increased. This crisis culminated on August 21, 1963, when Nhu ransacked pagodas all over the country. Priests and nuns were arrested and tortured. 1400 people were mass arrested as being “enemies of the state.” This just happened a few days after Diem promised Us Ambassador Nolting that he would take more conciliatory actions to with the hearts and minds of the Buddhist majority.

Shortly afterwards, there was the infamous “coup memo”, where the US said that they would have to remove Diem from power, if he could not end his brother’s tyranny upon the Buddhist population. The response they got, was that South Vietnamese generals were planning a coup against Diem and Nhu. The Us Ambassador didn’t interfere, and on November 2, just a few weeks before President JFK was assassinated, Diem and his brother were also assassinated after they failed an escape attempt.

The next leader, Dương Văn Minh did not fare much better, because ultimately, the South Vietnamese government could “not serve two masters”: their us backers and the Vietnamese people. While, some aspects of religious persecution was rolled back under the Junta government, they could never fix economic situation, because their real backers were always the investors seeking to profit in Vietnam.

While one may disagree on the methods, no one can deny that the self-immolation of Thich Quang Duc was not impactful. Ironically, in 1965, when the US involvement in the Vietnam war went into full swing, Quaker Norman Morrison self-immolated in front of the Pentagon, an incident that Robert McNamara still says had a deep impact on him. Norman Morrison wasn’t the only one. Many others in the US also did, but they did not create the same headlines.