Self-Immolation for Protest

Talks between South Korea and the United States about a possible free trade agreement sparked a flurry of protests outside the hotel where delegates met.

One man set himself on fire and shouted "Stop the Korea-U.S. FTA" according to the New York Times. The man suffered third-degree burns all over his body. Below is a video of the man being extinguished and carried out by ambulance.



Burning Against War

This event invokes the memory of a photo that emerged from the American support of South Vietnamese president Ngô Đình Diệm. Buddhist monks were heavily involved in protesting the suppression. But in the early morning of June 11, 1963, two monks got out of a car, poured gasoline on Thích Quảng Đức and set him ablaze. Quảng Đức burned to death at a busy intersection in downtown Saigon, Vietnam.

Reporting for the New York Times, David Halberstam gave this account of what he witnessed:

I was to see that sight again, but once was enough. Flames were coming from a human being;his body was slowly withering and shriveling up, his head blackening and charring. In the air was the smell of burning human flesh; human beings burn surprisingly quickly. Behind me I could hear the sobbing of the Vietnamese who were now gathering. I was too shocked to cry, too confused to take notes or ask questions, too bewildered to even think.... As he burned he never moved a muscle, never uttered a sound, his outward composure in sharp contrast to the wailing people around him.

The only photographer at the scene, Malcolm Browne describes his feelings of the event in a PBS special Reporting America at War:

I've been asked a couple times whether I could have prevented the suicide. I could not. There was a phalanx of perhaps two hundred monks and nuns who were ready to block me if I tried to move. A couple of them chucked themselves under the wheels of a fire truck that arrived. But in the years since, I've had this searing feeling of perhaps having in some way contributed to the death of a kind old man who probably would not have done what he did — nor would the monks in general have done what they did — if they had not been assured of the presence of a newsman who could convey the images and experience to the outer world.

That same day the photo was shown to John F. Kennedy, soon after the American involvement with the Ngô Đình Diệm regime ended.

Copycats

Four Americans self-immolated themselves in protest of the Vietnam War, including three in 1965 (82-year-old Alice Herz, 22-year-old Roger Allen LaPorte, Norman Morrision outside the Pentagon), Florence Beaumont in 1967 and George Winne Jr. at the University of California campus in 1970.

For more cases visit Wikipedia's site on self-immolations.