The Puzzle of Self-Immolation: Why Tibetan Nationalists Die without Killing

• In Event: Opposition and Protest: Participation and Consequences

Abstract

Between 2011 and 2017, in one of the largest waves of self-immolations the world has seen to date, nearly 170 Tibetans set themselves on fire to protest Chinese rule. The gruesome tactic chosen by the protesters took even the most seasoned observers by surprise. Why did the protesters choose one of the most painful and costly methods of expressing their grievances and voicing their demands? Why did Tibet, with no preexisting cultural tolerance for ordinary suicide, suddenly turn into a global hotspot for suicide protests? And to what extent can the Tibetan self-immolations shed light on larger global trends in the rise of suicide protest? For those who have come to view the Tibet movement through the normative lens of nonviolent discipline, the sudden emergence of suicide protest marked a radical departure from the conventional repertoire of contention. If the fundamental point of nonviolent discipline is to avoid the loss of life on either side of a conflict, then choosing a tactic that guarantees one’s own death seems pointless, not to mention puzzling. There is a well established body of knowledge about the strategic logic and tactical choice of suicide terrorism. Though the overall effectiveness of suicide terrorism is a subject of ongoing debate, there is little dispute among scholars about the fundamental rationality of the enterprise itself. By contrast, the logic of self-immolation is much less clear. The strategic calculus –– if there is one –– that motivates his act of political self-sacrifice is inaccessible to us, like the contents inside a black box. Unlike the suicide bomber, who works in close coordination with an organization that first recruits him, then trains him, and finally takes responsibility for his deadly action, the self-immolator operates alone and leaves behind no one who can provide a rational articulation of his grievances let alone explain the reasoning and motivation behind his tactical selection. This study is an attempt to probe and compare the relative causal importance of scriptural foundations, strategic calculations and tactical considerations that may have driven scores of Tibetans to set themselves alight as a means of political protest. Through in-depth interviews with nearly 80 subjects including 40 Tibetan monks and 40 non-monastic Tibetans, I provide a street-level view into the monastic and lay public’s conception of violence and selection of tactics. By leveraging scriptural interpretation, documents analysis, and in-depth interviews, I seek to illuminate the conflict processes and causal pathways that led scores of Tibetans to join the wave of suicide protests.

Author

• Tenzin Dorjee, Columbia University