Self-immolation

This article covers one form of suicide; on the myth of people inflaming without an apparent cause, see spontaneous human self-ignition .

This article is about suicide. For those at risk, there is a wide network of offers of help in which ways out are shown. In acute emergencies, the telephone counseling and the European emergency number 112 can be reached continuously and free of charge. After an initial crisis intervention , qualified referrals can be made to suitable counseling centers on request.

Self-immolation is a form of suicide or suicide attempt in which a person doused his own body with a fire accelerator , such as gasoline, and set himself on fire. Mental illness plays a role in numerous self-immolations, and these often do not take place in public. Public self-immolation, on the other hand, often aims to protest against an issue , for example against the occupation of a state or against oppression. The agony of self-immolation illustrates the agony of perceived injustice, be it material, political or emotional. In addition, agonizing suicide seems to those affected to arouse strong emotions and thereby increase the intensity of the intended message.

Self-immolation as a suicide

The self-immolation is an extremely painful and not necessarily promising suicide method, as it is often thwarted by bystanders. Burn patients remain conscious for a long time during the fire and thus experience the pain very intensely. It is also the fear of this pain that leads some victims of high-rise fires to prefer jumping to certain death rather than being burned alive. Modern medicine can save the life of many seriously burned people; A later discharge from the hospital is often possible, but mostly with severe disabilities and disfigurements.

Self-immolation as a protest

The modern history of self-immolation as a protest begins with the famous case of Thích Quảng Đức , who killed himself in 1963 to protest the discrimination against Buddhists under President Ngô Đình Diệm in South Vietnam. The intensive coverage of Đứcs' death in flames and the worldwide attention that it received ensured that this practice could establish itself as a form of political protest. After Đức's death, there were soon more self-ignitions in Vietnam, the USA and other countries. Initially, most of the cases were directed against United States foreign policy. With the self-immolation of the Czechoslovak student Jan Palach in 1969, this practice spread to the Warsaw Pact states . To date, self-immolations have occurred in dozens of countries, with a wide range of political concerns linked to them. A sociological study counted 533 cases between 1963 and 2002, including protest suicides caused by other methods, such as B. hanging or shooting. On the basis of the same definition, a further survey counted 298 cases from 2003 to 2010, with record numbers of 102 and 104 in 2009 and 2010. Self-immolations can occur in three different forms: as isolated individual cases, as series with interruptions of several years or Months (e.g. in the case of the Kurdistan Movement), or as waves in which a large number of people kill each other for the same political goal and no more than a month passes between the cases (e.g. in the case of the conflicts around Tibet or Telangana).

Self-immolations are often public, dramatic, and a reaction to social and political conflict. Hence it becomes a newsworthy event for the media. They can be viewed as a form of altruistic suicide for a collective cause. Unlike suicide bombings , they are usually not aimed at injuring or killing another person. Self-ignitions receive attention and are often viewed as martyrdom due to the particularly painful death by fire . The concern of self-immolation is often expressed in a goodbye message, which is usually written. Because of its political demands and appeals as well as the view of one's own death, these messages differ greatly from the farewell letters of non-political suicides. They often pursue a complex political strategy, as can be seen in the letters of Jan Palach or Artin Penik .

Public self-immolations in history

Cases in Asia

• The traditional, religiously permitted widow self-immolation ( Sati ) is known above all in India .
• In 2005, a south Indian psychiatric study on gender differences in suicide methods found a significantly significant difference between Indian men and women who had chosen the path of self-immolation as their suicide method: Among women, self-immolation was the third most common method with 8.1% of the suicide attempts examined, among male victims the rate was less than two percent.
• During the Great Schism of the Russian Church , Old Believers burned themselves to death in an action known as the “baptism of fire”.
• On June 11, 1963, the Vietnamese monk Thích Quảng Đức burned himself to death in Saigon to protest against the suppression of Buddhists in South Vietnam by President Ngô Đình Diệm .
• In protest against the introduction of Hindi as the official language of India , the 27-year-old Chinnasamy was set on fire on January 27, 1964 in the state of Tamil Nadu .
• Since April 1998, 124 Tibetans and 26 Tibetan women set themselves on fire in protest against Chinese politics and the oppression of Tibet. 127 of them died.
• On January 29, 2009, journalist Muthukumar burned himself to death in the Indian city of Chennai to draw attention to the suffering of the Tamils ​​as a result of the civil war in Sri Lanka .
• For similar reasons, Murugathasan Varnakulasingham set himself on fire on February 12, 2009 in front of the United Nations office in Geneva. By April 2009 there had been a total of 22 (attempted) self-immolations for this motive in India, Switzerland, Great Britain and Malaysia.
• On November 29, 2009, Siripuram Srikanth, a student, burned himself to death in Hyderabad, India, to protest for the division of Andhra Pradesh and the re-establishment of the state of Telangana. By August 2010, at least one hundred cases of suicide protests followed, which lasted until December 2012.
• On July 30, 2012, 64-year-old Đặng Thị Kim Liêng, mother of 46-year-old Vietnamese blogger Tạ Phong Tần , set herself on fire in front of the local authorities in her home province of Bạc Liêu in protest against the imprisonment of her daughter, who was critical of the government, and the communist Vietnamese regime itself on. On the way to the hospital, she succumbed to her serious injuries, reported a Catholic priest friend.

Cases in Germany

• On August 18, 1976 burned himself in Zeitz the evangelical pastor Oskar Brüsewitz in protest against the political situation in the former GDR .
• On November 16, 1977, the Tübingen teacher Hartmut Gründler burned himself to death in Hamburg during the SPD party congress in protest against the " continued government misinformation " in energy policy and nuclear policy , especially with regard to final disposal .
• On February 8, 1978, a nun and a monk owned by Ananda Marga , Didi Uma and Dada Lokesh, whose real names Erika Ruppert and Helmut Kleinknecht, burned themselves to death at the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin ; They wanted to protest against the persecution of Ananda Marga in India and the indifference prevailing in the West in this regard.
• On September 17, 1978, the Protestant pastor Rolf Günther burned himself in the church in Falkenstein in Vogtland (Saxony, then GDR); possibly the deed of pastor Brüsewitz served him as a model. In this case, however, conflicts within the church were the cause of the self-immolation.
• On October 19, 1978, Werner Greifendorf burned himself to death in the Cottbus penitentiary during a release in the courtyard, as a protest against his detention.
• On May 26, 1982 the Turkish Semra Ertan burned herself to death five days before her 26th birthday in a Hamburg market square in protest against the increasing xenophobia in Germany.
• On June 10, 1982, Dietrich Stumpf set himself on fire at a peace demonstration in Bonn in order to set an example against the "armaments madness that is heading straight for the next world war" . Before that he had sent a goodbye message to the “Kieler Rundschau”.
• During Kurdish protests supported by the Kurdistan Workers' Party in Germany on March 19, 1994 in Mannheim, the two women Nilgün Yildirim (“Berîvan”) and Bedriye Tas (“Ronahî”) set themselves on fire. Both died from their burns.
• On April 25, 1995, the 75-year-old Sudeten German Reinhold Elstner burned himself to death in protest at the Wehrmacht exhibition in front of the Feldherrnhalle in Munich.
• In a solidarity campaign for political prisoners in Turkey , Kazim Gülbag set himself on fire in front of the prison in Regensburg on April 23, 2001. In front of the building he had hung a banner with the inscription "I protest against the fascist Turkish state and the massacre in the prisons" .
• On 31 October 2006 burned himself in the Erfurt Augustinian monastery with Roland Weisselberg another Protestant minister. In a farewell letter, the pastor named the reason for his act as “concern about the spread of Islam ”.
• On October 13, 2012, a 32-year-old man set himself on fire in front of the German Reichstag in Berlin . “According to the police, the 32-year-old was carrying a suicide note. It is assumed that the background to the crime lies in the private sphere of the death victim and is not politically motivated. ”Before the crime, he stabbed himself in the upper body with a knife before he doused himself with a flammable liquid and set himself on fire.
• On November 30, 2012, a 35-year-old Gambier set himself on fire in a supermarket in Cologne in order to kill himself. He had announced the deed beforehand after an argument with his wife. After eight days he died of the burns he had suffered.
• On May 1, 2013, a 46-year-old man with Turkish-Bulgarian roots set himself on fire in front of his ex-girlfriend's apartment in Munich . Because he was rioting in front of her apartment, the police sent him off. He survived with second and third degree burns.
• On February 18, 2014, the 49-year-old Iranian exile Kahve Pouryazdani or Kaveh Yazdani set himself on fire in Tübingen's old town as a protest against German refugee policy . He soon succumbed to his injuries.
• On March 2, 2015, property protectors prevented the self-immolation of a 47-year-old in front of the Berlin Reichstag .
• On November 28, 2016, the state parliament member of Baden-Württemberg, Wolfgang Raufelder, committed suicide by immolating himself .
• In September 2018, the Kurd Ümit A. burned himself to death in protest against the Turkish President Erdogan.
• In February 2019, a man burned himself in front of the Krefeld district court against the solitary confinement of PKK boss Abdullah Öcalan and against German police violence.

Cases in the rest of Europe

• In 1786, a farmer in Upper Styria burned himself to death on a stake he had built himself to protest against the abolition of several public holidays by Emperor Joseph II .
• On September 8, 1968, the former burned Polish resistance fighters Ryszard Siwiec during a political event at the Warsaw -year stadium Ten in protest against the invasion of the Warsaw Pact into Czechoslovakia in August 1968 and the socialist regime in Poland.
• Five months later, on January 16, 1969, Jan Palach burned himself to death for the same reason; a month later Jan Zajíc did this in the same place ( Wenceslas Square in Prague).
• On October 2, 1978, Lynette Phillips set herself on fire in front of the UN headquarters in Geneva. She belonged to the Ananda Marga movement and left a suicide note in which she denounced the "inhumanity (...) of our society".
• On March 21, 1980, Walenty Badylak (* 1904) burned himself to death on the main market in Krakow in protest against the Polish authorities' silence about the Katyn massacre .
• On August 10, 1982, Artin Penik , a 61-year-old Christian Turk of Armenian origin, burned himself to death in Istanbul on the lively Taksim Square in protest against the Asala terror .
• In October 2012, the two Albanian former political prisoners Lirak Bejko and Gjergj Ndreca set themselves on fire in Tirana in order to get the government to immediately compensate all victims of the Hoxha regime with 2000 lek (14 euros) for every day in detention. With the self-immolation they wanted to emphasize their demands. Bejko was 47 years old, Ndreca's age is unknown. Lirak Bejko died, Gjergj Ndreca survived.
• In mid-February 2013 a woman went to a bank in Almassora near Valencia, poured a flammable liquid over herself and shouted: "You have taken everything from me!". Then she set herself on fire. She was taken to a clinic with serious injuries.
• On September 6, 2013, a man burned himself to death in front of the headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva to draw attention to the suffering of the Tamils ​​since the civil war in Sri Lanka and that of the Tibetans as a result of Chinese oppression.
• On October 19, 2017, the Pole Piotr Szczęsny lit himself in Warsaw in protest against the policies of the ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS). He died ten days later.

Italy

• In the course of the national debt crisis in Italy , six people set themselves on fire in 2012/13:
  • a 58-year-old craftsman in front of the tax office in Bologna , against whom proceedings for tax evasion are pending (in a suicide note he wrote: "I always paid my taxes.")
  • a few days later a 27-year-old Moroccan in front of the Verona town hall . He has not received a salary for four months, has lost his apartment and is eating in the poor canteen,
  • a 54-year-old worker in front of the parliament in Rome . The widower, who had lost his job two months earlier, had argued with his brothers over an inheritance,
  • a 48 year old unemployed man in a field in Turin . He wrote in a suicide note that he was burning himself out of desperation about his financial situation,
  • 52-year-old Frediano Manzi in front of the RAI building in Milan . He wanted to protest against loan sharks. He survived with severe burns
  • a 64 year old homeowner in front of his home in Vittoria . He had no longer serviced a mortgage for 10,000 euros, which is why the bank foreclosed his house for 26,000 euros. He also set fire to his wife. Both survived seriously injured.
• On February 14, 2013, an Ivorian set himself on fire at the airport in Rome to protest his deportation. He had previously shown his deportation warrant to a customs officer before dousing himself with fuel and setting it on fire. He survived with severe burns.

France

• In the 17th century, cases of self-immolation by Jesuit priests became known in France , who castigated themselves and burned certain limbs (arms, legs) in a rigorous understanding of the imitation of Christ .
• On February 13, 2013, a 43-year-old French man set himself on fire in front of the employment office in Nantes to protest the employment office's decision not to extend unemployment benefits for him. He died from severe burns.
• Two days later, on February 15, 2013, a 49-year-old French man set himself on fire in front of his home in Saint-Ouen to protest that his unemployment benefits would soon be cut. He survived with first and second degree burns on his hands, face, and upper body.
• Also on February 15, 2013, two similar self-immolations occurred in France: A 16-year-old student spilled a flammable liquid on his chest in the playground of his school in La Rochelle and set himself on fire. Classmates put him out and saved him from injury. The motive was unclear. A man spilled a 5-liter can of petrol on himself in a supermarket in Beaune and threatened to set himself on fire. Police and firefighters managed to overpower the man before he set himself on fire. Here, too, the motive was unclear.

Bulgaria

In 2013 and 2014 self-immolations increased in Bulgaria. Such incidents have occurred since then:

• On February 19, 2013, 26-year-old Traian Marechkov from Veliko Tarnovo sat down in the middle of a zebra crossing and set himself on fire .
• On February 20, 2013, 36-year-old Bulgarian Plamen Goranov set fire to himself in front of the town hall in Varna to protest against the policies of Rossen Plevnelev and Boyko Borissov and for a new electoral law . He wore a banderole demanding the resignation of the mayor of Varna Kiril Jordanow. He succumbed to his injuries on March 4, 2013. Shortly afterwards, the incumbent mayor of the city resigned.
• On February 26, 2013, 53-year-old Ventsislav Vasilev set himself on fire in Radnevo after declaring that he had long lived in great poverty. He died on March 10, 2013.
• On March 18, 2013, a 59-year-old miner from the small Bulgarian town of Bobov Dol set himself on fire with gasoline. The man had just lost his job and was deleted by his son.
• On March 20, 2013, an unemployed 40-year-old family man set himself on fire in the village stadium in the Bulgarian city of Sitowo in protest against poverty and corruption. The doctors at the Naval Hospital in Varna could not save the man's life.
• In June 2013, a 59-year-old man living alone set himself on fire in the courtyard of his house in Charmanli, Bulgaria .
• On August 12, 2014, a 38-year-old woman set herself on fire in Sofia Slatina, burning 85% of her skin.
• On August 14, 2014, a 77-year-old woman set herself on fire in Ploski and died as a result.
• In September 2014, a 42-year-old man from the Bulgarian city of Yambol set himself on fire . According to media reports, Dimitar Zhelev stopped between the villages of Miroljubowo and Izvorishte, set himself on fire, and then informed his wife by phone. He was hospitalized with very severe burns.
• In October 2013, a 40-year-old man set himself on fire in Dupnitsa .
• On November 3, 2014, 38-year-old Lidiya Petrova set herself on fire in front of the presidential palace in Sofia . She was admitted to hospital with severe burns and was placed in an artificial coma. The woman died a few days later.
• On November 4, 2014, a 48-year-old man set himself on fire in Sandanski City . Burns affected 25 percent of his body.
• In Pernik , a young woman on November 19, 2014 burned.

In 2015, the Bulgarian authorities registered five fatal self-immolations, one each for 2016 and 2018. In 2019, in the first half of February, a 51-year-old man from the village of Burja near Drjanowo, a 52-year-old woman in the yard of her house in the village of Kamen and a father of two children from the city of Rila were set on fire.

Cases in the US

From 1965 onwards, some people in the USA burned themselves to death as a sign of protest against the Vietnam War .

• The 82-year-old German immigrant Alice Herz killed herself on March 16, 1965 in front of the University of Michigan,
• On November 2, 1965, 31-year-old Norman Morrison burned himself to death outside the office of US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara at the Pentagon after reading a report on the destruction of Vietnamese villages by napalm .
• On November 9, 1965, 22-year-old Roger Allen LaPorte burned himself to death in front of the UN building in New York City .
• On May 10, 1970, 23-year-old George Winne Jr. died of his burns on the University of California , San Diego campus , saying, "In God's name, end the war."
• In February 1991, University of Massachusetts Amherst student Greg Levey burned himself to death in Amherst in protest against the Gulf War .
• On November 3, 2006, Malachi Ritscher burned himself to death in Chicago in protest against the Iraq war .
• On October 4, 2013, a man was infected near the Capitol in Washington, DC ; he died of the burns a few hours later .

Cases in the rest of America

• In 1972, 28-year-old writer Huguette Gaulin burned herself to death in Montreal .

Cases in the Middle East and North Africa

• On December 17, 2010, the young Tunisian Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in Sidi Bouzid . This sparked a wave of social unrest that eventually led to the overthrow of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali . In the course of the subsequent Arab Spring in several countries, there were numerous acts of imitation.
• On July 14, 2012, the anniversary of the social protests in Israel, 57-year-old Moshe Silman set himself on fire in Tel Aviv as part of the demonstration taking place there. Before that, he had lost his job and eventually his home after a stroke. The man initially survived seriously injured, but died a few days later. A week later, an almost 50-year-old wheelchair user set himself on fire at a large intersection near Tel Aviv. According to a report by the ARD radio correspondent in Tel Aviv, Bettina Marx, broadcast on Deutschlandradio Kultur and Deutschlandfunk on July 24, 2012 , there were almost two dozen similar attempts.

See also

• Self immolations in Tibet

literature

• Hans von Hentig : Contribution to the teaching of self-immolation. In: German journal for the entire judicial medicine 56 (1965) 5, pp. 324–333.
• Dieter Herold: "Everyone should see how I die". In: STERN of April 20, 1978, pp. 50-54.
• Christian Braune: fire signs. Why people set themselves alight . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Verlag, Göttingen 2005. ISBN 3-525-46224-7
• Udo Grashoff : “In an attack of depression” suicides in the GDR, Ch.Links Verlag, Berlin 2006. ISBN 978-3-86153-420-4
• Edmund Käbisch : The Falkenstein Fanal. A study about the decomposition of the church by the Stasi after the self-immolation of the pastor Rolf Günther . Ed. La Colombe, Bergisch Gladbach 2007. ISBN 3-929351-27-7
• Lorenz Graitl: "Dying as a spectacle. On the communicative dimension of politically motivated suicide". VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2012. ISBN 978-3-531-18461-6
• Sabine Stach: "Legacy politics. Jan Palach and Oskar Brüsewitz as political martyrs". Wallstein-Verlag, Göttingen 2016, 511 pp. ISBN 978-3-8353-1815-1 .

Web links

Commons : self-immolation  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Volker Faust: Fire suicide - why people set fire to themselves
• Flaming protest - Why? Report in the Hamburger Abendblatt
• Self-immolation in Germany, taz, August 2, 2003
• Bulgarians set fire to themselves in desperation and protest , VICE , September 2013.

Notes and individual references

1. ↑ Biggs, Michael (2005). "Dying Without Killing: Self-Immolations, 1963-2002". In Diego Gambetta. Making Sense of Suicide Missions. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-929797-9 .
2. ↑ Lorenz Graitl: "Die as spectacle. On the communicative dimension of politically motivated suicide". VS Verlag for Social Sciences, Wiesbaden 2012.
3. ↑ ibid., P. 43.
4. ^ Graitl (2012).
5. ↑ CT Sudhir Kumara, Rajesh Mohanb, Gopinath Ranjithc, R. Chandrasekaran: Gender differences in medically serious suicide attempts: A study from South India. Full text of the paper as a PDF document, doi: 10.1016 / j.psychres.2005.11.012.
6. ↑ Indian Express November 12, 2011, TN to install statue in memory of anti-Hindi activist , accessed August 13, 2012
7. ^ Protest in Tibet: Nun burns herself ( memento from November 8, 2011 in the Internet Archive ), t-online.de from November 4, 2011
8. ^ Tibetan exile sets on fire phayul.com , November 5, 2011
9. ↑ Graitl (2012), p. 48.
10. ↑ Graitl (2012), pp. 49–58
11. ↑ Violence against bloggers in Vietnam: Mother sets herself on fire , Berliner Zeitung, July 31, 2012
12. ↑ http://www.philjohn.com/papers/pjkd_gh06t.html
13. ↑ http://www.metafuture.org/Articles/IntroductoryChapterfromthebookSituatingSarkar.htm
14. ↑ BStU , MfS, BV Karl-Marx-Stadt, No. 1209/79, Vol. I, Bl. 74f., Vol. II, Bl. 10-16
15. ^ Stefan Appelius and Michael Sontheimer: Death of a proletarian. In: TAZ. February 7, 2015, accessed March 22, 2015 . 
16. ↑ http://www.migazin.de/2012/05/29/turkin-verbrennt-sich-auf-st-pauli
17. ↑ Der Spiegel July 12, 1982 Lost for Survival , accessed August 13, 2012
18. ↑ The time April 1, 1994 Has the ban strengthened the PKK?
19. ↑ http://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/isku/verbindungen/gefangene/hungerstreik2000/erklaerungen/026.htm
20. ↑ The fanal that nobody understands Der Spiegel , November 3, 2006
21. ^ Berlin: Self-immolation of a man in front of the Reichstag building Spreadnews.de, October 13, 2012
22. ↑ WDR 5, 2015: It burns! The Fanal of Kaveh Yazdani ( Memento of August 7, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on November 1, 2015
23. ↑ WDR 5, 2015: It burns! The Fanal of Kaveh Yazdani; Manuscript (PDF file; 326 kB), accessed on November 1, 2015
24. ^ Tübingen: An outcry for more rights
25. ↑ Press release of the Berlin Police from March 2, 2015
26. ↑ Erk Acarer: Self-immolation in Ingolstadt: “I'm going to get petrol” . In: The daily newspaper: taz . September 30, 2018, ISSN  0931-9085 ( taz.de [accessed March 23, 2019]).
27. ↑ Self-immolation before the Krefeld district court: Victims died. March 22, 2019, accessed on March 23, 2019 (German). 
28. ↑ Graitl (2012), p. 38.
29. ↑ Biggs (2005).
30. ↑ [1] (Spanish)
31. ↑ cash.ch: Man sets himself on fire in front of the UN main building in Geneva , accessed on September 11, 2013.
32. ↑ zeit.de April 6, 2012: Is the crisis making Italy depressive?
33. ↑ derstandard.at August 11, 2012: Self-immolation in front of Parliament in Rome
34. ↑ nachrichten.at August 21, 2012: Unemployed Italian set himself on fire
35. ↑ Euronews February 6, 2013: Protests against loan sharks: self-immolation in Milan
36. ↑ 02elf.net May 17, 2013: Self-immolation due to eviction ( memento of the original from March 22, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
37. ^ ^{A b} Loren Coleman: The Copycat Effect: How the Media and Popular Culture Trigger the Mayhem in Tomorrow's Headlines . Paraview Pocket-Simon and Schuster, New York City 2004, ISBN 0-7434-8223-9 .
38. ↑ [2] , accessed on April 14, 2015
39. ↑ Deadly way out. Retrieved March 20, 2019 . 
40. ^ SPIEGEL ONLINE, Hamburg Germany: Unrest in Bulgaria: New Casualty in Wave of Self-Immolations. In: SPIEGEL ONLINE. Retrieved August 1, 2016 . 
41. ↑ Euronews: Self-immolation: Bulgarian dies from injuries , accessed March 4, 2013.
42. ↑ vice.com: Burning Man of Bulgaria , accessed June 2, 2015
43. ↑ Man Attempts Self-Immolation in Front of Sofia Presidential Palace - Novinite.com - Sofia News Agency. Retrieved August 1, 2016 . 
44. ^ Another self-immolation in Bulgaria , accessed on December 17, 2013.
45. ^ Protest against poverty: Fourth Bulgarian dies after self-immolation , accessed on September 11, 2013.
46. ↑ Another fatal self-immolation in Bulgaria zeit.de of December 17, 2013
47. ↑ Life of Latest Bulgarian Self-Immolator in Danger novinite.com of August 13, 2013
48. ↑ Self-Immolation Wave Claims 9th Victim in Bulgaria novinite.com of August 15, 2013
49. ↑ New self-immolation case in Bulgaria , accessed on September 13, 2013.
50. ^ New Self-Immolation Attempted in Bulgaria , accessed November 11, 2014.
51. ↑ Der Standard on November 4, 2014: [38-year-old burned himself in front of the Bulgarian presidential palace http://derstandard.at/2000007692765/38-Jaehrige-verbrannte-sich-vor-bulgarischem-Praesidentpalast ], accessed on November 4, 2014
52. ↑ Sofia Self-Immolator Lidiya Petrova Dies in Hospital , accessed November 11, 2014.
53. ↑ Man Sets Himself Ablaze in Bulgaria's Sandanski , accessed November 11, 2014.
54. ↑ New self-immolation case in Bulgaria: Another young woman sets herself on fire to end life in poverty standartnews.com. Retrieved November 19, 2014
55. ↑ Deadly way out. Retrieved March 20, 2019 . 
56. ↑ time.com
57. ↑ http://www.greenfieldoptimist.com/content/view/366/52/  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
58. ↑ http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15916765
59. ↑ washingtonpost.com
60. ^ Al Jazeera Deutsch: Timeline: Tunisia's uprising , accessed September 15, 2011.
61. ↑ http://www.jeuneafrique.com/Article/ARTJAWEB20110212105526/algerie-pauvrete-tunisie-manifestationquatrieme-deces-par-immolation-en-algerie-a-la-veille-de-la-marche-du-12-fevrier .html
62. ↑ Israel: Demonstrator died after self-ignition in Tel Aviv. In: Zeit Online. July 20, 2012. Retrieved April 22, 2018 . 
63. ↑ [3]
64. ↑ [4]
65. ↑ Self-immolation: Wave of desperation spills over Israel  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
66. ↑ The social situation in Israel is becoming more and more dramatic - the number of suicide attempts is increasing  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
67. ↑ [5]  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.