The tragic events of September 11, 2001 sparked a wave of publications about suicide bombing, a subject that attracted little scholarly attention in the 1980s and 1990s. This led many researchers to focus on related phenomena like suicide protest, fasting-unto-death, or martyrdom in general. Given the vast amount of academic work on suicide bombings, as well as the great body of literature on suicide notes,2 it is astonishing that there are rather few studies that deal specifically with sacrifice notes related to politically motivated suicides (Park 1994; Movahedi 1999; Park 2004; Hafez 2007; Leenaars et al. 2010). Focusing on textual representations of self-killing in the name of a higher cause, this article tries to imagine “what message it might contain” (Spivak 2004: 93) and to reconstruct its communicative logic. A suicide attacks are not only about “dying to win” (Pape 2005) and striking anywhere without recourse to an escape plan; it is also about spreading a message, thereby turning one’s own death into a media weapon.
A politically motivated suicide shall be defined as deliberate self-killing3 for the advancement of a collective cause (Biggs 2005: 173–4) accompanied by a request, though sometimes implicit, for response and a call to action. This can appear in the form of suicide bombing, where the perpetrator usually aims to extinguish the life of as many people as possible. Two forms of self-killing that do not aim to harm other individuals4 include fasting-unto-death (where a person refrains from eating until a certain demand is fulfilled) and the suicide protest (by means of fire or otherwise), in service of a political or ideological goal. Such examples of self-killing can already be found in pre-modern and early modern times. In 574, the monk Tao-chi and seven of his friends fasted to their deaths in protest against anti-Buddhist measures (Jan 1965: 2). Another example can be found in 1786. Protesting Joseph II’s decision to abolish several state holidays in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a man burned himself on a funeral pyre opposite a tree where he had attached a crucifix and an image of the Virgin Mary (Osiander 1813: 184). In the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the first suicide bombings could be observed, as in the Polish-Russian War of 1792, or various battles between Greece and the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century (Diez 1838: 412–15).5 Until the second half of the twentieth century, there was little mutual influence between different cases of political suicide, which rarely appeared in campaigns or waves.
A global diffusion of suicide protest as a protest repertoire began in 1963 (Biggs 2005) and of suicide bombing as a military strategy in 1981 (Horowitz 2010). Both modes of action spread to dozens of countries and have been executed in every year since the initial occurrences. The rise of suicide protest can be traced back to the self-immolation of the monk Thich Quang Duc in 1963, whose spectacular suicide provoked worldwide reactions and contributed tremendously to the overthrow of the South Vietnamese regime later that year (Biggs 2005: 204–5). In the following decades, the wish to emulate Duc’s model led to a widespread adoption of self-immolation, demonstrating that this protest repertoire can be used by almost any movement without links to a sole political current (ibid.: 182). It has been used by peace activists in South Vietnam, by Kurdish nationalists (Grojean 2008), by the Korean Worker’s and Minjung Movements (Park 1994; Kim 2008; Kim 2012), as well as by upper-caste students in India who felt threatened by their government’s affirmative action policy. In 1995, self-immolation was even employed by a Munich-based Holocaust denier.
Though death by fire is most common, suicide protests can be accomplished by any method: shooting, poisoning, strangulation, self-inflicted stab wounds, or jumping in front of a train. Furthermore, suicide protests can appear as isolated instances, as a series of events with interruptions, or as waves. The self-immolation in 1982 of the Turkish citizen Artin Penik in the name of all “Armenians in Turkey” (Hürriyet 1982) was an isolated event, expressing his rejection of an attack by ASALA6 on Ankara Airport from just days before. In a series with interruptions, the fatal deed leads to imitations targeting the same or a similar cause, with a delay of several months, years, or decades, as in the numerous suicides connected to the Kurdish independence movement that have been taking place since 1982 (see Grojean 2008: 676–9).
Entire waves of suicide protest can be observed in India in recent years, although strangely attracting scant media attention in the West. Between January and April 2009, 25 men in Tamil Nadu (India) and the Tamil diaspora attempted and committed suicide protesting the Sri Lankan Civil War.
An even larger wave took place between November 2009 and January 2014 in the context of the Telangana Movement. Its proponents seek the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh and the creation of an independent Telangana state within the Indian union. Their arguments for secession are not based on any ethnic or religious difference, but lie in what they see as the systematic socio-economic under-development of the region by the eastern regions of the present Andhra Pradesh state. Even though the present author has counted some 200 cases and movement partisans claim more than a thousand deaths,7 it took the Indian government four years to finally grant the wish for a new state. This delay was also caused by the existence of the competing Samakhya Andhra Movement that vows to uphold the unity of Andhra Pradesh and has also resorted to the use of suicides, albeit in lesser number, from December 2009 until January 2010.
The first modern suicide bombing is widely considered to have been the attack by the Shi’ite Al-Dawa on the Iraqi embassy in Beirut in December 1981 during the Iran–Iraq War. Several attacks in Lebanon followed. Most fraught with consequences were the October 1983 twin suicide bombings against US and French barracks in which 299 people were killed with explosive-laden trucks (Pedahzur 2005: 48). The complete withdrawal of US and French troops in the succeeding months led other groups like Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tigers to copy this successful model, one that has spread to over forty countries. The last decade has witnessed not only a dramatic increase in suicide attacks but also a transition. During the 1980s and 1990s, the majority of bombings were committed by nationalists both Islamic—such as Hezbollah and Hamas—and secular, such as the PKK and the Tamil Tigers. Most bombings are now perpetrated by groups that adhere to a Salafi-Jihadi ideology, like al-Qaeda or Ansar al-Sunna in Iraq.
In contrast with suicide protest and suicide bombing, a global diffusion of fasting-unto-death has yet to take place, as few are actually willing to surrender their life during self-starvation. Apart from isolated cases, fasting-unto-death is mainly connected to Irish Republicanism (most famous is the case of IRA member Bobby Sands), different (sub-) nationalisms in India, and illegal communist parties in Turkey (including the PKK).
Previous research on “ordinary” suicide has probed for the meanings, or intentions, behind suicide notes (Ho et al. 1998). Based on the theories of ten suicidologists, Leenaars and colleagues used a list of 35 protocol sentences focusing on intra-psychic and interpersonal factors to compare 33 notes of Korean self-immolators with 33 notes of “common” suicides from the United States. The study suggests important differences between the two samples, the main difference being the “extreme suicidal mind” of the Korean immolators (Leenaars et al. 2010: 666). The authors found that 90.9 percent of the Korean immolators’ notes show evidence of a “serious disorder in adjustment” (such as depression, schizophrenia, and borderline personality) and 100 percent of “murderous impulses,” while the scores in the corresponding categories in the US sample were only 24.2 and 0 percent respectively (ibid.: 664). While the results of this study cannot be dismissed entirely, it is necessary to ask if such approaches do not fail to grasp several important aspects of self-chosen martyrdom. Most important is the possibility of a direct assessment of the intra-psychic condition based solely on those texts. Several factors work against this. Martyr videos and farewell letters are highly standardized and have a rather limited discourse. Political organizations can alter a text prior to death or afterwards (Grojean 2008: 597–611) or even be its actual author (Merari 2010: 134). Even though altruistic self-sacrifice might indeed, in some cases, be obscuring motivations grounded in hopelessness or egotistic reasons (Merari 2010: 267; Biggs 2005: 199), the analysis of a sacrifice note will probably not be the key to discovering other causes. If we suppose that Palestinian suicide bombers are secretly depressed and seek death for purely personal reasons, they would certainly not state that in their testaments. Sacrifice notes tell more about the way in which the author wants the audience to perceive the act rather than revealing the actual state of mind prior to the deed (Yang and Lester 2011). Using pre-defined and pre-interpreted categories as Leenaars and colleagues do also misses certain important expressive and instrumental elements in the content of sacrifice notes (Jorgensen-Earp 1987; Singh 2011).
It is extremely difficult to conduct empirical research on political suicides, since it is almost never possible to interview agents before the deed or witness the act itself. Interviews with family members might be unreliable as they glorify the entire biography or portray the person as an innocent victim manipulated by an organization. Similarly, captured suicide bombers may reinterpret their original motivations or deny their guilt. Apart from interviews, some of the few resources that are accessible to outsiders are written letters or martyr videos produced for publication after death. The present author has collected a sample of excerpts and full texts gathered mainly from digital newspaper archives and sympathizers’ homepages. Instead of searching for the “true” motivation behind the act, this chapter tries to deal with sacrifice notes by asking new questions. What meaning is attributed to self-chosen death? For whom are the messages written? What is the audience urged to do?
Commonalities in sacrifice notes stem from mutual influence—mostly but not exclusively restricted to a regional context—as well as from the fact that they face similar communicative problems, and can thus be regarded as communicative genres (Luckmann 1989). As with notes left by “ordinary” suicides, the authors of sacrifice notes often give instructions regarding property or express love for their family and friends (Jacobs 1967; McClelland et al. 2000). However, the politically motivated sacrifice can be accepted as such only if it is represented as a legitimate and reasonable act with a positive result. In contrast to suicide notes, self-chosen death cannot be framed as self-murder or suicide but as martyrdom8 or sacrifice, a distinction that was already observed by Halbwachs (1978 [1932]: 291–308). Thus the content of the documents is often diametrically opposed to that of suicide notes. Although Shneidman (1985: 131) defines “hopeless-helplessness” as one of the universal characteristics of all suicides, it would be difficult to find a similar expression of emotion in the testaments of suicide bombers. Jamal Sati, a member of the Lebanese Communist Party who perpetrated an attack in 1985, describes the feelings prior to his imminent death as a human bomb not as melancholic but as euphoric:
My happiness was so great when the enemy Israeli forces were forced to retreat and withdraw from my district under the heavy blows of the Resistance … But my happiness was even greater when the leadership of the Front agreed that I could continue participating in its operations … and it is much more exciting that I have to perform a suicide operation. (Khoury and Mroué 2006: 189)9
Because Sati wants his death to be understood as martyrdom, he encourages his family to be proud of him and celebrate his actions:
As for you, the dearest and finest mother and father in existence, my beloved brothers and sisters: my wish for you is not to mourn and wail, but rejoice and dance as you would do at my wedding, for I am the proud groom of martyrdom, and that is the happiest wedding I could hope for. (Ibid.: 189)10
In the case of Hamas, it is interesting to observe that the group not only regards self-inflicted death as martyrdom (as Islamic law forbids suicide), but also engages in psychological discourse, referring to scientific research about suicide bombers:
Some people have the impression that Hamas’ soldiers are people who have despaired in life and want to die … And when studies were conducted with some objectivity, results showed that most Hamas soldiers are contrary to this misleading impression. Desperate individuals cannot form a resistance movement that can bear the brunt of repeated crackdowns by the occupation for 17 years. (Ezzedeen Al-Qassam Brigades 2006)
Similarly, the British citizen Waheed Zaman, who planned to die in 2006, explicitly tries to refute the media image of suicide bombers as psychologically unstable and manipulated youngsters by implicitly referring to his status as a final-year biomedical science student in his martyr video: “I have not been brainwashed, I am educated to a very high standard. I am old enough to make my own decision” (BBC 2008).
Indeed, many authors feel obliged to ensure that their death is not assessed as an ordinary suicide, including those who do not have to deal with a religious suicide taboo. Eyüp Beyaz, a member of the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party Front in Turkey who was shot after trying to bomb the Ministry of Justice, clarifies in his final letter that he is pursuing the act because he overly esteems human life:
Even though I love life very much I consciously and willingly end it, so that injustice, poverty and dependency on imperialism end and a life in dignity can be possible. My life shall be dedicated to my beloved people, my home and the radiant future of my country. It shall be dedicated to the future of our children. (Özgürlük 2007)
Colonel Rooban, a Black Air Tiger who died in 2009 when he tried to crash his plane into the Sri Lanka Air Force headquarters, expressed much the same: “I have never dreamed of wasting one’s precious life; However, I feel privileged and proud that I can become a black tiger to earn respect for my people and my homeland” (TamilNet 2009c). Utterances like these unintentionally disprove Durkheim’s hypothesis (1952: 221), reiterated by Stack (2004: 9), that “altruistic suicides … occur in social groups where there is a low value placed on the individual.” Additional justifications state that the voluntary surrender of one’s own life is the only way. “There is no other option” (TamilNet 2009a) wrote the journalist Muthukumar, the first person who set himself ablaze to protest the war in Sri Lanka in 2009. The authors of sacrifice notes often explain the rationality of going to their deaths, confident in the triumph of their cause. An unwavering belief in success can be found in almost all of the last letters of Turks who were fasting to death. Ilginç Özkeskin, who succumbed to self-starvation in 1996, wrote: “Like the other comrades I am convinced we will reach victory. To achieve this victory, I will fall too, like my comrades” (DHKC Information Bureau 1996). Some authors do not confine themselves to promise that they will be unequivocally triumphant, but even announce that they will become immortal after they donate their life for the cause. The motif of immortality is frequently encountered in the last letters of Turkish Communists or the above-mentioned Jamal Sati. The secular suicide bomber states that through his heroic deed he will stay alive in the memory of those who survive him: “Now, I am departing my country, in body only; I will still exist in the souls of all the honest patriots in Lebanon” (Khoury and Mroué 2006: 189).
Sacrifice notes not only attribute very different meanings to the transition from life to death; they are also directed to a public different from that which would read suicide notes and thus look for different responses. As representations of sacrificial acts, the notes follow the structure of sacrifice as observed by Mauss and Hubert (1981 [1899]). According to Turner (1966), this sacrificial system is an almost universal mode of symbolic communication. The act is initiated by a “sacrificer” who offers a “victim” to a godhead hoping that they will show their gratitude in return. A “sacrificer”—an individual, a family, a clan, a tribe or a nation (Mauss and Hubert 1981: 10)—is supposed to benefit from the sacrificial offering that was made. As in pre-modern martyrdom, the “sacrificer” and the “victim” merge into one in politically motivated suicide. However, the face of dying for a cause has changed since the time of Mauss and Hubert. In contrast to pre-modern religious sacrifices, the act is directed less at those who are physically present but rather towards a public that can witness it through the media. Today’s acts can also be dedicated to the environment, the prevention of a nuclear catastrophe, the success of a political party, the establishment of world peace, or socialist revolution. For the sacrificer, it is no longer necessary to be part of the collective for which he intends to give his life. Politically motivated suicides differ significantly from traditional sacrifices, in that the former usually do not aim to elicit divine intervention (Biggs 2012) and focus rather on the reactions of the audience. These can vary, ranging from a small group such as the comrades of the fasting-to-death Özkeskin, to the “inhabitants of the whole world!” (Prague TV 2007) addressed by Zdenek Adamec, a young man who burned himself to death in 2003. Some draft individual letters to each audience; others speak to many different groups in a single document. Muthukumar, for example, lists several groups in both Tamil Nadu, and Tamil Eelam [Sri Lanka], the Tamil Tigers, as well as the international community, and President Obama himself.
Target audiences can be roughly divided in three different groups, which Cook and Allison (2007: 88) have already described for martyr videos: “(1) organization members (or strong ideological supporters of the organization), (2) sympathetic publics (including potential recruits), and (3) unsympathetic publics (enemies).” Many messages are addressed to the group with which agents identify, usually defined along the lines of religion, ethnicity, nationality, or political belief. The future martyr stresses that he is dying for the group and thus unites an imagined community (Anderson 1989) in a common loss. Dying as a martyr, the author speaks from the position of an elite, reassuring the audience that they are on the right path and encouraging them to further mobilize or to focus on specific problems. The sacrifice of the martyr is meant to prove the invincibility of the group as shown in the video message of one of the LTTE’s Black Tigers: “What I want to tell to you all before I leave is that there is nothing that a black tiger cannot destroy whenever there’s barriers in front of our struggle” (YouTube 2008).
In messages directed to potential sympathizers in the national or world public, the author speaks from a further distance. The tone of these messages can range from friendly to accusatory. Murukathasan, a Sri Lankan Tamil, immolated himself in front of the UNO headquarters in Geneva to send a message to the world community: “This will tell you a bright message which reach your heart and minds and wake up your soul” (TamilNet 2009b). Though the international community has ignored the suffering of the Tamils, he expresses no hostility towards them. Instead, he hopes that his fiery death—intended to be a representation of the suffering of the Tamil civilians affected by war—will evoke empathy and compassion, which in return will bring the international community to intervene in the Sri Lankan Civil War.
Direct appeals can also be made to a state or population regarded as hostile or “traitors” and “collaborators” within one’s own collective. Waheed Zaman’s martyr video seeks to explain to US and UK publics that they, the “infidel” inhabitants, were targeted with suicide bombings as punishment for their sins against Muslims:
You will not feel any security or peace in your lands until you [stop] [we say] interfering in the affairs of the Muslim completely. I’m warning you today so tomorrow you have no cause for complaints. Remember, as you kill us, you will be killed and as you bomb us, you will be bombed. (BBC 2008)
Such expressions of extreme hostility are found not only in the videos of suicide bombers but also in the letters of those employing suicide protest or fasting-unto-death. In his farewell letter, Artin Penik condemns the “ASALA murderers,” appearing as an angel of revenge when he threatens that the group’s roots will be exterminated by the Turkish nation if they do not put an immediate end to their actions (Hürriyet 1982).
The specific requests for response made in sacrifice notes can differ greatly and their communicative logic can be quite diverse (Graitl 2012), with some demands remaining rather vague. Alice Herz, a US anti-war protester who burned herself to death in 1965, advocated making the world a better place where humans can live in peace and dignity (Shibata 1977: 30). Other notes go beyond appeals for mobilization (Kim 2008) and have a very complex agenda. While Artin Penik pleas for ASALA to stop their violence, his death is also meant to prove that Armenians are peaceful, loyal citizens who do not sympathize with terrorist actions. Reading between the lines, Penik’s self-immolation further serves to protect Armenians who had been targeted in retaliation for past ASALA attacks.
Regardless of how diverse their intentions may be, all the authors of a sacrifice note must deal with one common communicative problem: ensuring that the audience actually follows the urgent call to action. This can be achieved by giving convincing political analysis, or through emotional appeals (Jorgensen-Earp 1987; Lahiri 2013), to their audience’s compassion, shame, or horror. The ultimate argument that is made remains death, however. Dying is seen a necessity without alternative by the authors; otherwise, their public outcry might not be heard: “Our words are dead until we give them life with our blood” (The Herald 2008, 21 November), was written in red ink by Nicky Reilly, who made a futile attempt to die as a suicide bomber in the UK in 2008.
Apart from the military benefits of suicide bombings (Pape 2005; Moghadam 2008), so far there has been hardly any research on the efficiency of political suicides. Success is not easy to define and even more difficult to measure (Biggs 2005; Kim 2008). The following shall discuss the various extents to which a politically motivated suicide can be successful. The first objective requires that the message reaches the intended audience(s). For that, a message must exist in the first place. Some people may think that their actions are self-explanatory, and forego drafting a statement. In this case, the death will usually fail to be regarded as political suicide unless family or others can explain underlying motives and thus undertake the responsibility of making sense of the deed. The contents of some letters remain forever unknown due to the violent character of the suicide itself. Shortly before jumping in front of a train in the name of an independent Telangana in August 2011, 25-year-old Pottigari Ramesh had called his brother, indicating a sacrifice note in his wallet (The Hindu 2011). When the police recovered his body, neither wallet nor sacrifice letter could be found. Telangana politicians then alleged that the police had purposefully concealed the note, though this remains unproven. Even the absence of censorship provides no guarantee for the successful communication of intent. In fact, most sacrifice notes are only quoted in excerpts, which might nevertheless be enough to spread “the message.” Artin Penik is probably the only person whose entire note was published on a newspaper’s front page, in the state-owned Hürriyet (1982). If newspapers or television stations decline to release the content, this task must be fulfilled by a network of organization members or sympathizers.
As Smith (2008: 458) has eloquently stated: “It takes two to create a martyrdom; the actor who sacrifices life and the community that offers the title.” Self-chosen death is not always rewarded with the crown of martyrdom. The social community that is addressed by the martyr-to-be may be divided in their reactions and some might regard the person as a “crackpot” (Jorgensen-Earp 1987: 91), or a terrorist. People who kill themselves for an idea or a political aim that are already very popular rarely have to deal with these problems. The birth of a martyr cannot take place without a group of martyrologists who spread his message and pledge to make sure that the sacrifice will not be in vain. Yet the group of martyrologists can unknowingly form a new interpretation of the act or deliberately set it in a new frame. In the case of the Telangana suicides, several parties compete over the appropriation of the martyrs. Furthermore, they argue about whose policy is in accordance with the wishes of the deceased.
After successfully explaining the motivation to the intended audiences and gaining as much social acceptance as possible, another difficulty is to make permanent political change and effectively obtain the goals formulated in the message. The overall societal impact may be the best index of the efficiency of a politically motivated suicide. Nevertheless, it is not always possible to prove whether and to which extent major political change is causally determined by a previous self-sacrifice. Failure is much easier to detect. Environmental activist Ulrich Baer’s self-immolation in Germany in 1994 did gain media attention for a short time, but his name was quickly forgotten. As no movement claimed his legacy, and the government was not pressured to implement any policy change, the deed had hardly any result. In contrast, both the self-immolation of Artin Penik and of Muthukumar had far-reaching consequences. After Penik had burned himself in protest against the first attack by the Armenian group ASALA targeting civilians, the Turkish government eagerly accepted the sacrifice of its Armenian citizen. When state officials attended his funeral, he was acknowledged as a legitimate representative of Armenians in Turkey as was his intention. His communicative strategy to prove the patriotism of the native Armenians and their abhorrence of terrorism was thus effectively realized. At the same time, the attempt to change the tactics of the armed group utterly failed. ASALA did not desist from its violence and continued to attack civilians. The success of Penik’s action was thus ambivalent. So was the self-immolation of Muthukumar in Tamil Nadu, India. His death immediately sparked mass demonstrations, strikes, and some minor violent riots, heating up the already existing anger about the war against Tamil civilians in Sri Lanka. Knowing that they could not ignore Muthukumar’s immolation, the regional government offered compensation to his family, which they declined. The consequences of his action were not limited to intensifying protests as it even inspired other people to sacrifice their life as well, thus realizing the threat made against the international community in his sacrifice letter: “If you are interested in adding us to the list of Aborigines, Maya and Inca peoples, each day one of us will come in front of you and kill ourselves, as it comes in one of our myths” (TamilNet 2009a). In this way from January until April 2009, 25 more men attempted to or succeeded in killing themselves for similar demands. Despite this tremendous impact, Muthukumar could not achieve all of his objectives. The international community completely ignored his act and no country pressured Sri Lanka to stop its war. In contrast, the Turkish government conceded to demands made by Ilginç Özkeskin and eleven other hunger-strikers who died in 1996. Most significantly, it announced the cessation of transfers to Eskisehir prison where the incarcerated would have been subjected to solitary confinement. This decision was not directly influenced by the sacrifice notes of the deceased, but rather by the wish of the government to absolve itself from further controversy, as dozens of other prisoners were refusing food and facing death.
Some political suicides may go far beyond the concern that is initially uttered. Before the Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc burned himself to death, he had written a letter to South Vietnamese President Diem asking him “to be kind and tolerant towards his people and enforce a policy of religious equality” (Joiner 1964: 918). In fact, Quang Duc’s suicide—and subsequent self-immolations inspired by his act—contributed to the overthrow of the government in the November 1963 coup sanctioned by the Kennedy administration. The latter had hitherto backed the Diem regime but was not willing to face any more suicides (Biggs 2005: 204–5; Murray Yang 2011: 4).
The effects of suicide protest can also be unintentional as in the case of the Tunisian street vendor Mohammed Bouazizi in December 2010. After the police confiscated his vegetable and fruit cart (thereby taking away his means of subsistence), Bouazizi decided to self-immolate in front of the governor’s office to communicate his frustration over the miserable conditions he had to live in and to shame the responsible officers. Most likely Bouazizi did not foresee the events that his suicide would trigger. Not only did he spark mass unrest that led to a quick overthrow of the Tunisian regime, he galvanized mass protests and revolutions in many African and Arab countries. Though Bouazizi did leave a Facebook message to his mother before he died, the story of his humiliation by the police—he was allegedly slapped by a female officer—attracted larger public attention because his fate was one with which many people could identify. Thus the reactions to his tragic death were not limited to public shock and outrage, but also led to the unleashing of collective frustrations in various countries, resulting in a turnover of the whole political landscape in North Africa and the Middle East.
Events initiated by political suicides can sometimes be counterproductive, causing more harm than benefit to a political movement. When five followers of Falun Gong self-immolated themselves in 2001, the Chinese government effectively used the footage of the act to discredit the movement as a cult that manipulates people into committing suicide (Biggs 2005: 205–6; Farley this volume).11
Politically motivated suicide is mainly a media weapon based on an instrumental rationality in which a person dies with the aim of effecting a major change of the political situation. Neither Durkheimian nor suicidological or psychiatric approaches do full justice to the nature of this kind of self-sacrifice. Durkheim regarded altruistic suicide as a phenomenon predominantly found in “lower societies” and explained by excessive social integration, lack of individualization, lack of intellectual development, and a disdain of the value of life (Durkheim 1952: 217–40). As Durkheim—writing in 1897—believed that all of these forces would be eradicated by ongoing modernization in the future, he predicted that altruistic suicide was destined for extinction (ibid.: 373). Some authors like Pape (2005: 171–98) and Stack (2004) use Durkheim’s explanatory frame for present-day altruistic suicides, including suicide bombing. Even though Stack discusses some mistakes in Durkheim’s theory,12 he states “the primitive society model can be applied to countercultures and perhaps even certain subcultures in modern society that approximate primitive societies” (2004: 19). Suicide bombing, suicide protest, and fasting-unto-death are in no way archaic. In fact, they are the very result of modernization processes. Technological innovations like the stabilization and miniaturization of explosives as well as the invention of gasoline (Biggs 2005: 178) made suicide bombings and self-immolations possible. Turks fasting to death after the year 2000 made use of modern medical knowledge when they abstained from solid food but took vitamin B1 to prevent the Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome and to extend the “communicative suffering” (Biggs 2012) up to a period of more than 300 days prior to their death. The evolution of a global media society is possibly the most important factor that enabled the rise of politically motivated suicide. Messages can be distributed in a very short time to large audiences and potentially even a global public. Media orchestrations of politically motivated suicides have always adapted to new developments. As early as the nineteenth century, letters were drafted in hopes of being distributed by news agencies (ibid.). For a long time, those who killed themselves in the name of an idea had to depend on others to report their actions. When Quang Duc died in 1963, he needed US newspapers to tell the world about his act of protest. By the mid-1980s this had changed. Secular-nationalist groups in Lebanon were the first to produce martyr videos of suicide bombers that could be aired on the same day by state-owned television stations. The protagonists now became media producers themselves and could as a consequence take more control of how their acts would be perceived. Today, videos of suicide bombers in Iraq and other countries are uploaded to the Internet, which thus serves as an alternative public outlet for Jihadi groups and others. As described earlier in this chapter, the media have also been responsible for the global diffusion of political suicides as reports on the success of certain cases caused others to emulate their model. Though many political suicides—especially suicide bombings—are collectively planned, they can also be set in motion by individuals acting on their own. High social integration into a group as postulated by Durkheim can be the case, but is not a necessary precondition (Taylor 1982: 191). Although Durkheim’s “altruistic suicide” is still a useful term (Jorgensen-Earp 1987: 83) as it indicates self-chosen dying for a collective cause, it is nevertheless important to stress that politically motivated suicide is a new and specific form of this type distinct from the historic cases he describes. As a result, Durkheim’s explanatory frame is too narrow and dismisses the instrumental and communicative character of the phenomenon.
The same is true for suicidological and psychiatric approaches that focus almost entirely on the intra-psychic motivation of the individual. They tend to take models derived from “ordinary” suicide and apply them to self-sacrifice without considering the major differences between the two. Politically motivated suicide is therefore regarded as the result of a mental illness, such as depression or a personality disorder. The written testimonies of the deceased are regarded as nothing more than the manifestation of a troubled mind, thereby largely neglecting social causes and political effects.
Trying to go beyond these approaches, this chapter has looked at what these messages want to communicate and what social meanings are attributed to the suicidal act. Using death as an argument, sacrifice notes are directed at different audiences that can encompass kindred communities and potential sympathizers, as well as political opponents. When messages reach their audiences and the intended tasks are fulfilled, politically motivated suicide can be of enormous efficiency. It can draw attention to a political problem, initiate peaceful demonstrations or violent riots, and lead to drastic policy shifts. No matter how many people die for a cause, success is not always guaranteed. The desired results are often only partially realized, or the death fails to have any political impact whatsoever. Even if many people fall short of achieving their desired results, the wish to duplicate successful attempts—that is, those that have achieved their goal—is the reason for the overall high number of acts of political self-sacrifice and will be responsible for its persistence in the future.
Politically motivated suicide is in no way a homogenous field. Self-sacrifice can be pacifist or extremely violent, it can be secular or religious. In addition, it can be linked with almost any political movement. Yet sacrifice notes do share some common elements and metaphors, as they must address similar communicative problems. Another commonality of the various forms of political self-sacrifice is that orchestration by the media is nearly always a precondition to make death into a successful political weapon.13 Suicide bombing can be committed for military purposes alone—for example, harming the enemy army. Additional effects, such as destabilizing a political system by spreading fear and terror, can be brought about only when news regarding this event reaches a large audience.14 On the contrary, fasting-to-death and suicide protest are entirely dependent on media orchestration. Otherwise they remain obscure and meaningless acts of self-murder that do not attract any public attention. If social science wants to make sense of suicide missions (Gambetta 2005), there is no other option than to listen to what the related messages actually say.
Anderson, Benedict (1989). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.
BBC (2008). “‘Suicide videos’: What they said,” April 4. Accessed September 1, 2011. At <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7330367.stm>.
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1 I want to thank Charisma Lee who corrected my English and various friends who translated Turkish texts for me.
2 Letters in the context of what sociologist Emile Durkheim (1952) would have called “egoistic suicide.”
3 See also Mayo’s (1992) definition of suicide as summarized by De Leo et al. (2006: 8). This is of course a scientific definition that does not always correspond with what the agents attribute to their act, as a majority reject using the word “suicide.”
4 Comparing different phenomena like suicide bombing and suicide protest should not be seen as a moral judgment. This chapter tries to analyze abstract commonalities of various political suicides without putting the deliberate killing of civilians by suicide bombers on a level with peaceful forms of protest like self-immolation or fasting-unto-death. It should be stressed that suicide protest encompasses diverse political currents which can be diametrically opposed, ranging from anti-Nazism to Holocaust denial.
5 Although Diez’s descriptions are sometimes exaggerated and in a few cases even apocryphal, his interpretation of these deeds might be very disturbing for modern audiences. Before he describes the stories of several European suicide bombers whose victims are often Muslims he states: “Blowing yourself up in the air is a great and heroic mode of death … in which the suicide almost always also drags a large number of other individuals into death” (Diez 1838: 412, author’s translation from German).
6 The Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia sought to avenge the Armenian genocide by attacking Turkish diplomats and institutions in various countries. ASALA’s goal was to establish an independent Armenian state on the soil of Turkey.
7 Although this is likely an exaggeration, the actual number of attempted and completed self-killings might still be in the several hundreds, making it the largest wave of suicide protests in history.
8 This can also be seen in the manifesto of Anders Breivik who initially planned to die in his killing spree on Utøya and referred to his act as a “martyrdom operation.” After criticizing the Protestant Church for its moderate stand on suicide, Breivik goes on to explain that a “Justiciar Knight” who faces certain death at the hands of the enemy or kills himself in an explosion will indeed be a martyr. This is allegedly sanctioned by Catholic canon law (Breivik 2011: 1345–50). In his argumentation, the anti-Muslim attacker Breivik parallels the discourse of Salafi-Jihadi groups who justify suicide bombings with an invented tradition of “martyrdom operations” that have supposedly existed since the time of the prophet Mohammed (see Elif Medya 2010).
9 Sati recorded three different versions of his last will and testament, one of which was aired by the state-owned television station Télé-Liban (Khoury and Mroué 2006: 183).
10 Similar appeals not to weep or to wear black have been made by Palestinian suicide bombers (Hafez 2006: 91–2) and the Black Tigers, the suicide squad of the LTTE in Sri Lanka.
11 A decade later, the Chinese government made a huge effort to prevent the production and distribution of any photographic or video materials of Tibetan self-immolators.
12 Stack (2004: 19), for example, correctly points out that Durkheim exaggerates the general acceptance of suicide in “primitive societies,” albeit without questioning the dichotomy between “civilized” and “primitive” in general.
13 While this chapter deals explicitly with sacrifice notes and martyr videos, other sources of the communicative dimension of a political suicide can include slogans shouted before death, media interviews with surviving attempters and signs carried by suicide protesters. Communication can also be non-verbal and people can express themselves by carrying flags, via symbols, gestures, how they behave in front of a camera (Murray Yang 2011), or their dying body in fasting-to-death scenarios (Wee 1991).
14 Paradoxically, it is often the media of the “enemy country” that fulfill this function as demonstrated by Bell (2005), on the example of Chechen suicide bombers.