2018: Georgia, Oregon and New York Self-Immolations

Self-immolations have been a form of political protest in modern times since a number of Buddhist monks (including the most famous case of Thích Quảng Đức) immolated themselves by fire in protest of the persecution of Buddhists under the administration of Roman Catholic President Ngô Đình Diệm in South Vietnam. The immolations spread through Asia and to America from 1963 to 1971.

In the third known high-profile fire suicide attempt of 2018, a man is fighting for his life at Atlanta's Grady Memorial Hospital with burns to 85 to 90 percent of his body.

Georgia Veteran

A veteran who was fed up with treatment by the Department of Veterans Affairs set himself on fire in protest outside of the Georgia State Capitol building (seen above) in downtown Atlanta on June 26, 2018.

The 58-year-old from Mableton, Georgia, who has not yet been identified, parked his car alongside the Capitol before walking toward the building, where he commenced self-immolation, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

“He was strapped with some homemade incendiary devices (and) firecrackers, and doused himself with some kind of flammable liquid,” Georgia State Patrol Captain Mark Perry told the Atlanta newspaper.

The Georgia immolation appears to follow the same pattern of the immolation of Charles Ingram, a 51-year-old Gulf War veteran, who grew increasing frustrated by the Department of Veterans Affairs. In March 2016, shortly before his VA appointment, Ingram went to the clinic in Northfield, N.J., doused himself in gasoline and lit himself on fire. The clinic was closed at the time. He died.

Chloe Sagal

Exactly a week before, on Tuesday, June 19, 2018, a person lit themselves on fire in Lownsdale Square (see above), the park located across from the Multnomah County Courthouse in downtown Portland, Oregon.

The person entered the park, on crutches, and barely able to walk, wearing a red scarf around the neck. Then the individual sat down and began reading a statement about homelessness and mental health issues. The person died at the hospital.

The local media reported some confusion about the gender of the person. It turns out it was video developer Chloe Sagal, 31, who identified herself as trans.

Variety wrote:

Sagal was best known for her horror game “Homesick,” which follows the story of a woman searching for her friends inside the house where her family was murdered. She also made headlines in 2013 when she ran an Indiegogo campaign that was ostensibly for metal poisoning treatment. But, according to Eurogamer, the money was instead used for gender alteration surgery.

David Buckel

Another self-immolation of 2018 occurred on Saturday, April 14, 2018, when David Buckel, 60, a prominent green activist and lawyer for LGBT rights, died after setting himself on fire in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park protesting ecological destruction and global warming. The famed 60 year old attorney left behind a suicide note in which Buckel told of his intention of burning himself to death with "fossil fuel" in a bid to show how mankind was likewise killing itself. Buckel also worked as an urban gardener and ecologist with the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, helping run what he called the largest composting program in the country to use only renewable sources of energy.

The New York Daily News headlined the story.

Other related immolation articles:

Burning Man 2017

Immolations 2017

Palace Self-Immolation 2015

Aurora Self-Immolation 2014

Colorado Self-Immolation 2014

D. C. Self-Immolation 2013: 1, 2, 3

h/t to Media Monarchy for GA news.

Death, Immolation, and the Inauguration

Death may be knocking on the doorsteps of Donald Trump's Inauguration as the 45th President on Friday, January 20, 2017.

It appears to be a time when the unexpected may surprise those who wish to have things so well-ordered and planned.

This was a special week in January 1989 called "Palach Week." It marked the beginning of the end of Communism in Czechoslovakia, and the Velvet Revolution. There is a powerful documentary made in 2014, Agnieszka Holland’s Burning Bush (image above is from that film) that chronicles those times. The title has many meanings, of course.

Self-immolations have a way of changing the course of history, as the form of protest is so powerful, radical and shocking.

The Burning Bush

Concidentially, another kind of Bush may be important in the midst of this upcoming very political American weekend.

On Wednesday, January 18, 2017, the 41st President George H. W. Bush was admitted to the intensive care unit at Houston Methodist Hospital to address an acute respiratory problem stemming from pneumonia. Bush underwent a procedure to clear his air passages. His wife Barbara, furthermore, was hospitalized as a precaution.

The 36th President Lyndon Baines Johnson died on January 22, 1973, two days after Richard Nixon was sworn in for this 2nd term. Johnson's death disrupted Nixon's "celebration" of the start of what would be his shortened term, and LBJ's state funeral was held on January 25, 1973.

In an era of wall-to-wall media, the death of George H. W. Bush would be an auspicious beginning for Trump's first term.

Immolations 2017

Two reports of self-immolations (suicides by fire) in which both people lived surfaced yesterday. One is directly related to Trump's assuming power.

On Tuesday night, January 17, 2017, a man set himself on fire outside the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.
DC Fire and EMS received a call at 9:23 p.m. about an individual trying to place himself on fire.
"We did arrive and did find a male adult with burns and we transported that patient to an area hospital with potential but not life-threatening burns," DC Fire and EMS Department spokesman Vito Maggiolo told CNN Wednesday. The man attempted to start the small blaze outside the Trump hotel but was burned badly in the process and taken to a hospital for treatment.

The 45-year-old man, who has not yet been identified, said the act was in protest of the President-elect's looming inauguration, Daily Mail reports said.

Witnesses described how he yelled 'Trump' several times as 'flames ran up his back' before lying down in the street.

Also on Tuesday night, January 17, 2017, another self-immolation occurred, this one in Nashua, New Hampshire. The Union Leader reported:

Officials said a pair of passers-by came to the aid of a man who tried to immolate himself in a city parking lot Tuesday night, using jackets and snow from the ground to put out the fire.

Police and fire said they received the report of the unidentified man on fire just before 10:30 p.m. in the parking lot of the Headlines store at 37 East Hollis St.

According to a press release from the Nashua Fire Department, the man had just purchased gasoline from a nearby gas station, poured it over his head and ignited himself.

The Fire Department said the man suffered burns over at least 20 percent of his upper torso, but was conscious and breathing. He was taken to Southern New Hampshire Medical Center.

January 1969

In my book Suicide Clusters (NY: Simon and Schuster, 1987), I revisited how Prague and immolations were keys in overturning Communism. Here is my summary from a later work.

Jan Palach, a student at Charles University in Prague, startled passersby by pouring a liquid over his body at about 3 P.M. on January 16, 1969, and then setting himself ablaze. The twenty‑one‑year‑old student chose the statue of Wenceslas, the Czech hero saint, as the site of his protest in Prague. Palach had left a note declaring that he belonged to a group whose members planned to self‑incinerate themselves, one every ten days, until the Soviet troops departed. Palach's protest and death three days later got worldwide media coverage with others following his lead.

On January 20, 1969, crowds of people waving the Czechoslovak state flags, black flags and enlarged photographs of Jan Palach, gathered at the spot of Palach’s suicide. In the Philosophical Faculty building, the clocks were stopped so they showed the exact time of Palach's death (3:15 P.M.). Josef Hlavaty then self-immolated himself just as Palach had. Two days later, on January 22, Miroslav Malinka killed himself through suicide by fire, and Blanka Nachazelova suffocated herself with coal gas. On the day of the Palach funeral, Hlavaty died. 

In the next well-publicized suicide, Jan Zajic, an 18-year-old student at a vocational school in Sumperk, set himself on fire on February 25, 1969. Before his death, he gave his friends a poem about Palach and four letters, in which he described himself as “Torch no. 2.” He did it in Prague in the passageway of a building on Wenceslas Square, as he was trying to run to the statute, but he fell in flames and died there. He said he decided to immolate himself after seeing that life was returning to its old routine despite Palach's action.

On April 4, 1969, in another square, this time in the southeastern Bohemian city of Jihlava, Evzen Plocek, 40, set himself on fire. At least 26 people attempted suicide between January 20 and the end of April 1969, with at least seven of these dying by fire in Czechoslovakia, Scotland, and Hungary after Palach's death. Reports of seven other fatal self-immolations came from India, Pakistan, England, and the United States. ~ The Copycat Effect, (NY: New York, 2004).

Self-immolations, exactly 20 years later, in 1989, set off the overthrow of the Iron Curtain throughout the Eastern Block.

The self-immolations in the Arab Spring changed the political landscape, once again.

++++

“Hold on—that’s a trash fire. Over there is Trump’s Inauguration speech.”

The above (by coincidence) is The New Yorker's Daily Cartoon (by Tom Toro) for January 18, 2017.

Update:

During a live report on [January 19, 2017's] Thursday’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on the Fox News Channel, a young man protesting in Washington, DC claimed to have started a fire in the street, “Because I felt like it. And because I’m just saying, ‘Screw our president.'”