The Burning SeasonCan anyone explain all the fiery suicides?
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A few minutes after midnight on April 9, a man walked out of a pub in the small Moravian town of Velká Chýška, where he’d been drinking with his girlfriend and a few acquaintances. He poured a liter of gas over his head and set himself alight. The medics who arrived seven minutes later were unable to save him. The 43-year-old had a history of suicide attempts and had spent time in the Jihlava mental hospital. He left no suicide note, but a spokeswoman for the local police speculated as to the motive: The man, who had served several jail sentences in the past, was afraid of going back to prison. All this would have been little more than a bizarre item from a small Moravian village if not for one fact: It was the sixth suicide by fire in the Czech Republic in just over a month, the same number as had occurred in the previous eight years. The nation, in the words of one psychologist, seems to be in the grip of a “self-immolation mania.” It all started on Thursday, March 6. At about 8:30 am, Zdeněk Adamec, a high school student from Pelhřimov, set himself on fire at the top of Václavské náměstí. In a long farewell posted on the Internet, Adamec anguished over what he described as public apathy to human suffering. “Torch 2003 is a continuation of protests against evil that is tolerated throughout the world,” he wrote, and explicitly linked his action to the January 1969 self-immolation of Jan Palach, in nearly the same spot, in protest of the previous year’s Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and the subsequent “normalization” regime. Two more young men followed in Palach’s fiery wake. Many politicians and commentators have tried to play down any reference to the current political situation in the country in Adamec’s rambling manifesto, instead citing his statements on real and media violence (e.g. Tom and Jerry containing “more violence than many feature films”), the state of the environment and interpersonal relationships. But along with declaring that TV is an invention of Satan, Adamec calls himself “the victim of the so-called democratic system, one in which decisions are not made by the people but by money and power.” Significantly, he ends with a plea: “Please don’t make me into a madman.” Of course, this is precisely what happened. There was, initially, massive media interest. Journalists explored Adamec’s connection to the “darkers,” who sabotage high-voltage equipment to cause power outages. Adamec designed web pages for the group, which he did not name in his letter but referred to as a “terrorist organization” that “used” him. Journalists explored his personal and family life. Psychologists were consulted and quoted. Adamec was described as a loner with few, if any, friends and, according to neighbors in Humpolec, a “strange” relationship with his mother. |
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