Aaron Bushnell’s death in Washington, D.C., is the latest example of an extreme form of protest that people have used to express their grievances and attract the attention of a global audience.
If you or someone you know may be considering suicide or is in crisis, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.
Warning: This piece includes photos of self-immolations.
U.S. Air Force airman Aaron Bushnell died Sunday just hours after lighting himself on fire in front of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C.
The 25-year-old wore his military uniform as he appeared to livestream his self-immolation on Twitch, saying he would «no longer be complicit in genocide» and yelling «Free Palestine!» after he set himself ablaze.
Israel’s ongoing invasion of Gaza that began in late October has killed more than 29,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The offensive came in response to a surprise attack on Oct. 7 led by Hamas militants who crossed into Israel, killed 1,200 people and took around 240 hostages. In recent years, U.S. military aid to Israel has totaled about $3.3 billion annually.
Bushnell’s death is the latest example of an extreme form of protest that people have used for decades to express their grievances and attract the attention of a global audience.
The shocking, gruesome incidences of self-immolations garner news coverage and have proven effective in raising the public awareness of various causes, says University of Oxford sociologist Michael Biggs, who studies suicide protests.
«The very fact that we are talking about this shows that it breaks through. It has an impact,» Biggs said.
«Suicide protest is one way of gaining people’s attention and … saying, ‘We are really being oppressed, because if we weren’t oppressed, we wouldn’t be willing to die in this terribly painful manner,’ » he added.A history of self-immolation protests
One of the earliest examples of self-immolation as a political protest occurred in 1963, when a Buddhist monk named Thich Quang Duc lit himself on fire in the streets of Saigon to protest anti-Buddhist discrimination by the South Vietnamese government, which the U.
