Bouazizi, an unemployed graduate, supposedly set fire to himself when officials (or police) prevented him from selling vegetables on the streets of Sidi Bouzid without permission. That act was followed by the suicide of Hussein Nagi Felhi, who some reports claim was electrocuted after climbing a high-voltage tower, shouting "no for misery, no for unemployment" and touching a 30,000 megawatt cable. The subsequent protests featured the usual tear gas, shots, stone-throwing, burning of official buildings and looting of shops and other premises.
The BBC today reported 'Man dies after setting himself on fire in Saudi Arabia', with a 60 year old using "a petroleum product" in the south-western region of Jizan after bering "angered by how difficult it was to gain Saudi nationality". 43-year-old businessman Yacoub Ould Dahoud died in Mauritania after self-immolation in protest at that nation's government. A 25-year-old unemployed Egyptian died after setting himself on fire in Alexandria, with three people setting themselves on fire on the streets of Cairo.
'Suicide by Self-Immolation: Comprehensive Overview, Experiences and Suggestions by Alireza Ahmadi in (2007) 28(1) Journal of Burn Care & Research 30-41 comments that
Suicide by burning is a rare condition in the developed countries (0.06-1% of all suicides) but is more frequent in the developing countries (accounting for as many as 40.3% of all suicides). In different parts of Iran, between 1.39% and 9.50% of patients that attempted suicide and 25.0% and 40.3% of patients who committed suicide were via deliberate self-burning. Self-burning (immolation) comprises between 0.37% and 40% of total burn center admissions around the world and, in Iran, it comprises between 4.1% and 36.6% of admissions in Iranian burn centers. Approximately 80% of hospitalized self-immolation patients die. ... [In 2004 and 2005] the author examined all the suicidal patients who were admitted to the emergency department of hospitals in Kermanshah University of Medical Science. Examination included a retrospective cross-section study, via demographic questionnaires and suicidal checklists. During the period of study, 1820 patients who attempted suicide and 90 patients who successfully committed suicide were admitted. A total of 41% (37 cases) of patients who committed suicide were via self-immolation. Of these, 81% of self-immolation patients were female (P < .0005), and the female:male ratio was 4.3:1. A total of 86.5% of the patients were in the 11 to 30 years of age group. The mean age was 24.9 years (range, 14-50 years). Forty-nine percent of cases were single, 84% were illiterate or had a low level of education, 78.5% were housewives, and 14% were unemployed. Also, most of the patients (53%) were living in rural area, 97% did not have a previous history of suicide attempt, and 67.5% regretted their self-immolation act.There is a more edifying perspective in 'Buddhist Self-Immolation in Medieval China' by Jan Yün-hua in (1965) 4(2) History of Religions 243-268, which includes the following -
Another motivation for abandoning life came from the stories about Bodhisattvas who had sacrificed their bodies for the sake of other beings. An example of such inspiration is the monk T'anch'eng, who in order to prevent possible panic among his fellow villagers, offered his body to a tiger. Acharya Shao of Tzu-chou, in present Ssuch'uan province, tried to do the same but was unsuccessful. Fa-chin (d. 435) of Liang-chou, in present Kansu province, cut flesh off his body to feed other people, thus saving them from famine.In contrast, James Benn in Burning for the Buddha: Self-Immolation in Chinese Buddhism (University of Hawaii Press, 2007) refers to instances of 'moral blackmail'. Buddhist monk Dazhi (567-609) of Lushan for example "wailed loudly" after emperor Sui Yangdi placed restrictions on Buddhist orders, remonstrated with the emperor, used a hot iron to burn his own arm to a crisp, peeled off his flesh to reveal the bones underneath and then charred the bones.
The story of monk Seng-fu is more moving and dramatic. We read that, following his renunciation of worldly life, Seng-fu
silently thought of cutting off his relation with this world. At that time, there was a robbery in a village. A male child was captured by the robbers, who planned to remove its heart and liver in order to offer them to a god. Seng-fu was strolling on the road near the village at the time, and when he saw the robbery, he inquired about the abduction. Thereupon, he took off his robe and tried to redeem the child by his own body. The bandits ignored his proposal. Seng-fu argued: "Are the chief viscera of an adult unusable for sacrifice?"Among others who died for a similar cause was Monk P'u-an (d. 609), who cut off a piece of flesh from his thigh and thus saved the lives of three pigs from slaughter.
"When you cannot give up your own body, what is the use of using big words ?" replied the bandits.
Seng-fu then thought: "When the time comes, this illusory body of mine must die. If I use my death to rescue the child, I shall be alive though my body may perish." He therefore snatched a knife from the bandits and cut open his chest down to his navel.
On seeing this, the bandits were shocked and fled and thus the child was saved.
Michael Biggs in 'The Transnational Diffusion of Protest by Self-Immolation' [PDF] comments that
Protest by self-immolation — where an individual kills him or herself, without harming others, to advance a collective cause — entered the global repertoire of contention in the 1960s. This form of protest was invented, I suggest, in response to two long-term trends: the decline in public state violence and the growth of mass media. Although there had been previous examples, the self-immolation of a Buddhist monk in 1963 created a model that was borrowed in many different countries, across various cultures. I argue that almost all subsequent acts can be traced back to this model. Knowledge of self-immolation was diffused through the mass media, and not through social networks. Acts of self-immolation were usually intended to appeal to bystander publics or to exhort others to greater efforts on behalf of the cause. I conclude that research should transcend the customary units of analysis, to trace the diffusion of forms of protest (and other ideational elements) across disparate cultures and various movements.
