Tibetan Monk Immolation

An act of protest from the Vietnam War lives on in this photograph and in modern incidents.15 August 2011 Last updated at 08:44 ET BBC News

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Tibetan monk sets himself on fire in China

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A Tibetan monk has set himself alight in China's Sichuan province, amid claims of a crackdown on monasteries in the region.

Western-based activists said the monk, who they named as Tsewang Norbu, had died from his injuries.

A similar action sparked weeks of confrontation earlier this year in another town in Sichuan.

Unrest is fuelled by a widespread belief that the government wants to suppress Tibetan culture.

The argument has been going on for decades, with many Tibetans accusing the government of forcing monks to attend re-education camps, encouraging the migration of Han Chinese to Tibetan areas, and crushing any sign of dissent.

But the authorities say they have brought relative wealth and prosperity to a region that was a rural backwater.

The UK-based Free Tibet movement said the 29-year-old monk had doused himself with petrol and set himself alight at the Nyitso Monastery in Dawu town.

The group said he had been calling out "we Tibetan people want freedom", "long live the Dalai Lama" and "let the Dalai Lama Return to Tibet".

Most Tibetan monks are loyal to the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader who has lived in exile in India for decades.

The state-run Xinhua news agency quoted local government officials confirming that a monk had set himself alight, but gave no details of his condition.

In March, a monk set light to himself in Aba, about 100 miles (150km) from the latest incident.

Local people accused the authorities of locking down that monastery and carting off monks to be re-educated.

The UN later said up to 300 monks may have been illegally detained.

China has denied the accusations.

King Tut In Danger

The revolutions and overthrowing of governments across the Arab world that have been sparked by self-immolations may result in a danger for ancient treasures. The Egyptian Army reportedly has secured the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, in an attempt to protect the treasures from the era of the pharaoh kings, including the death mask of the boy king, Tutankhamun, according to a bulletin from Reuters.

Immolation Copycats 2011

Worldwide, we are in the midst of a wave of political

immolation copycats, with at least seven 

deadly incidents being recorded since 

the spark was ignited a month ago in Tunisia.

As I wrote in The Copycat Effect, one of the most imitated public and political forms of self-death is the fire suicide.

More protesters set themselves on fire in Egypt, Mauritania and Algeria on Monday, January 17, 2011, in apparent copycat fiery suicide attempts inspired by the act that helped trigger a popular uprising in Tunisia. Besides the Tunisian and Egyptian accounts, reports of fire suicides in four Algerian towns and in the capital of Mauritania have circulated in the past five days.

One incident involved a man setting himself on fire outside of parliament in the Egyptian capital. Policemen guarding Cairo's parliament building and some passers-by used fire extinguishers to put out the blaze surrounding Abdou Abdel-Monaam Hamadah, 48. He was taken to the hospital with burns on 60 percent of his body.

Egyptian Abdou Abdel-Monaam Hamadah is shown in a hospital in Cairo on Monday after setting himself on fire on a busy street in front of the People's Assembly. His hospital image was broadcast throughout the Arab world.

Another was of a Mauritanian man who set himself on fire in front of presidential palace in Nouakchott, the Mauritanian capital, in an echo of suicide that triggered Tunisia uprising. Yacoub Ould Dahoud, 40, a company director and member of a wealthy family, was upset about alleged government mistreatment of his tribe. Dahoud doused himself with gasoline while sitting in his locked car in front of the presidential palace and set himself on fire. He was rescued by security forces and bystanders who broke open his car windows. He was taken to the hospital with burns.

Four men in four different Algerian towns also set themselves on fire in the past week, Reuters reported. One of the men died after setting himself on fire at a government building in Algeria, state radio reported on Sunday, also echoing the self-immolation that triggered the protests that toppled the leader of neighboring Tunisia.

Mohsen Bouterfif doused himself in gasoline and set himself on fire on Thursday, January 13, after a meeting with the mayor of the small city of Boukhadra who was unable to provide him a job and a house, the daily El Khabar newspaper said. He died on Saturday of his burns.

The photographs being published are often graphic. Mohsen Bouterfif is shown in the hospital, after he doused himself in gasoline and set himself on fire.

About 100 young men protested over Mohsen's death in the town, in Tebessa province, 700 km east of Algiers. The governor of the province sacked the mayor, El Khabar said.

Several Algerian towns, including the capital Algiers, have experienced riots in recent weeks over unemployment and a sharp rise in the prices of food staples.

Official sources say two people have been killed and scores were injured during the unrest, which unfolded in parallel to street violence in Tunisia and demonstrations over high food prices in other North African and Middle Eastern countries. To calm the protests, Algeria has cut the cost of sugar and cooking oil.

The fall of Tunisian President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali on Friday -- the first time in generations that an Arab leader has been toppled by public protests -- sent a sharp signal to the rest of the region, dominated by autocratic regimes. 

The protests that brought down Ben Ali erupted after the self-immolation of 26-year-old vegetable seller Mohamed Bouazizi, who set himself on fire on December 17, 2010. Bouazizi died weeks later of his burns, becoming a martyr to crowds of students and the unemployed protesting against poor living conditions.

The incidents reflect the growing despair among the public of many Arab regimes resisting reform. They are deeply symbolic means of protest in a region that has little or no tolerance for dissent.

It was the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi, a 26-year-old unemployed man in Tunisia last month that sparked the tidal wave of protests that toppled President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali last week. A total of 78 people have been killed since the start of unrest in Tunisia, the country's interior minister told the media on January 17th.

Ben Ali ruled with an iron fist for 23 years, time spent in the company of similarly authoritarian rulers across much of the Arab world like Libya's Moammar Gadhafi, in power since 1969, Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, in office since 1981, and Yemen's Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has ruled that impoverished nation since he seized power more than 30 years.

The stunning collapse of the Tunisian leader drew a litany of calls for change elsewhere in the Arab world, but activists faced the reality of vast security forces heavily vested in the status quo and hard-line regimes that crack down on dissent.

The men who have set themselves alight in recent days appeared to be inspired by the self-immolation of Tunisian Mohamed Bouazizi, a university graduate whose fruits and vegetables market stand was confiscated by police because it had no permit. His death touched a nerve with educated, unemployed youths in the North African country, prompting the mass protests that toppled Ben Ali.

Self-immolation as a method of protest is uncommon in the Arab world, where many associate it with protesters in the Far East or the Indian subcontinent. But Egyptian women in rural or poor urban areas have been known to set themselves on fire to protest violent husbands, abusive parents or an unwanted suitor.

"It is clear that Tunisia and its events had an impact on Egypt as well as Algeria," said veteran Egyptian columnist Salama Ahmed Salama. The attempted self-immolation in Cairo on Monday, he added, will be a "worrying element to the government."

Arab political spokesmen are trying to put a calming spin on the impact of the fire copycats. Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit ruled out the possibility that Tunisia's political uprising will spread.

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Update, as per the comment below: The copycat immolations are spreading. A 16-year-old French boy was rushed to a local hospital on Tuesday (January 18, 2011) in critical condition after setting himself on fire at his Marseille private school. Meanwhile, also, an 18-year-old schoolboy from the southwestern town of Bordeaux, France, has been in a coma since November 18, 2010, when he set himself on fire in his school.

3 Days, 3 Attacks

I have pointed out that in China (and Japan), due to their strict firearms laws, such countries tend to manifest their "copycat school violence" in terms of "stabbing" series. Will this current stabbing spree spread to Japan or other Asian nations?

April 2010 appears to be turning into a prime example. The media has referred to these, very openly, as "copycats." Of course, the underlying theme of these events ending in suicides or parasuicidal incidents is no surprise for readers here.










Here's is a summary of the latest news:

Five incidents in a little over a month and three attacks in three days have left at least 9 children dead in China, all by knife-wielding older males.

1) Wang Yonglai

Friday, April 30, 2010

This attack occurred in the small village of Shangzhuang, near the city of Weifang in the northern province of Shandong. Just before eight o'clock in the morning, April 30, 2010, a man named as Wang Yonglai, a local farmer, age unknown, broke through the side door of the local pre-school, according to Xinhua, the government news agency.

Armed with a hammer and carrying a can of petrol, he struck a teacher and then lashed out at five children before he picked two up, doused himself with petrol and set himself on fire. Teachers at the school managed to grab the children from him, but Wang was reported to have died. The five victims are said to be in stable condition in the local hospital and none have life-threatening injuries.

2) Xu Yuyuan, 47

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Another attack involved a knife-wielding man stabbed 29 children at a kindergarten on Thursday in Taixing of East China's Jiangsu province. Five of the children are in critical condition and the rest are stable. No deaths had been reported as of Thursday night, said Sun Yun, deputy mayor of Taixing. Two teachers and one security guard were also injured after the 9:40 am attack. Witnesses report that he taunted onlookers, daring them to stop him as he carried out his rampage.

An initial police investigation said the suspect, 47-year-old Xu Yuyuan, was an unemployed local resident who had been fired from a local insurance company in 2001.

3) Chen Kangbing, 33

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

A mentally ill teacher on sick leave for the past four years broke into a school and wounded 18 students and a teacher in southern China’s Leizhou city in Guangdong province on April 28. The man in Wednesday's attack managed to slip into the school with a group of visiting teachers, Xinhua reported. Chen Kangbing,33, had been a teacher himself. Xinhua said he suffered from mental illness and had been on sick leave since February 2006.

4) Yang Jiaqin, 40

Monday, April 12, 2010

An attack occurred on April 12, 2010, when a man hacked to death a second grader and an elderly woman with a meat cleaver, near a school in southern Guangxi, and wounded five other people, including students. Yang Jiaqin, 40, chased his victims through Xizhen village of the southern Guangxi region not long after classes ended Monday afternoon. A 7-year-old girl and the 81-year-old woman later died.

5) Zheng Minsheng, 42

Tuesday, March 23, 2010; executed, Wednesday, April 28, 2010

The Chen Kangbing attack came the same day a man was executed for stabbing eight children to death outside their elementary school last month in the southeastern city of Nanping. The attack on March 23, 2010, at around 7:20 am local time, shocked China because eight children died and the assailant had no known history of mental illness. At his trial, Zheng Minsheng, 42, said he killed because he had been upset after being jilted by a woman and treated badly by her wealthy family. He was executed by firing squad on Wednesday, April 28, just a little over a month after his crime.

2004 Attacks

These attacks have officials looking into a similar wave of knife-related violence on children that occurred in 2004. After the 2004 attack at a school in Beijing that left nine students dead, the central government ordered tighter school security nationwide. Regulations that took effect in 2006 require schools to register or inspect visitors and keep out people who have no reason to come inside.

The list of 2004 stabbings in China (which eventually spread to Japan) may be found by clicking here.

There were also stabbings in 2008, associated with the Autumn Festivals in China and Japan (see here).