When I die, I want to die peacefully and in my sleep, just like by dear old grandma. Not yelling and screaming like her passengers in the back seat.
You’ve probably heard that one before, but often people joke about the way they want to bow out.
When asked how they want to die Mr Casanova will tell you he wants to be taken out by a jealous husband, while the gangsta rapper will rap about a hail of bullets.
However no matter who you talk to possibly the most common answer to the question of, ”What is the worst way to die?” is burning to death.
Anybody who has suffered severe burns will tell you of the excruciating pain, it is a death that nobody likes to imagine for themselves.
How strongly must someone feels about something then to take their own life by dousing themselves with petrol and setting themselves alight?
This is not just another way of committing suicide, this is done when you want your death to not only be remembered but to act as a catalyst for change.
Many of you will have seen the photos of some of the Buddhist monks who set themselves ablaze in the streets of South Vietnam to protest the Vietnam War.
The guy in uniform in the background is still lighting a smoke…
The first of the Buddhist monks to do this was Thích Quang Duc who was protesting the persecution of Buddhists by the South Vietnamese government.
Photographer Malcolm Brown won a Pulitzer Prize his photograph of the fiery suicide protest, that many of you may recognise from the cover of Rage Against The Machines first self-titled album.
Malcolm Browne’s Pulitzer Prize winning picture
So profound was the way in which this monk performed his protest and so great was the worldwide impact that US President John F Kennedy said this of the photo
“No news picture in history has generated so much emotion around the world as that one.”
So why bring this up now?
On Saturday in Geelong Leo Seemanpillai made the decision to end his own life.
He did this not by jumping off a bridge, or taking a bottle of pills, instead he chose to douse himself with petrol and set himself alight.
Now I don’t pretend to have an insight into Leo Seemanpillai’s mind as to why he would choose to end his life this way, but I don’t think is a huge assumption to make that it was to attract attention to his plight.
Why else would someone intentionally choose such a horrific way to go?
Leo’s plight was that he was a refugee who was in Australia under the rule of arguably the most heartless government this country has ever witnessed.
Leo had been on a bridging visa since last May and arrived in Australia by boat in January 2013 after fleeing Sri Lanka and spending a few years in an Indian refugee camp.
He has remained in limbo in Australia not knowing what his future holds and fearing deportation which he is aware could come at any time.
Leo also lived with the knowledge that despite the UN and other countries like England condemning Sri Lanka for allegations of war crimes such as rape, genocide, and the torture that Leo had suffered, Tony Abbott seemingly accepted these crimes by stating…
“We accept that sometimes in difficult circumstances, difficult things happen”
…and then applauding their actions by showering the Sri Lankan government with gifts of military hardware.
Leo decided that the most hideous and painful death that most of us could imagine was a better option than what he thought Scott Morrison and this Coalition were going to have on offer as he feared he was to be sent back to the torturers that our government had rewarded.
This was not some lone nutter or some kind of trouble starter, even in his death Leo Seemanpillai sought to help others. Leo did this by not only making sure that his death was noticed as a way of highlighting the plights of others, but even in the most simple of ways also. Leo was also insistent on being an organ donor so his liver, an eye, both kidneys and a lung have been removed for donation, a parting gift for needy citizens of a country that failed him.
There are signs everywhere of how Scott Morrison would like to see refugees dealt with…
As I write this on Christmas Island asylum seekers are sewing their lips together in a hunger strike that is a show of solidarity for Iranian asylum seeker Reza Berati, who was bashed to death on Manus Island on February 17. Meanwhile the Salvation Army have described the suspect of Berati’s murder, a coward who bashed an unarmed man to his death, not as a gutless murderer but as a “Hero”.
I guess I measure my heroes differently to the Salvation Army.
What I find a real kick in the guts to those of us with a shred of humanity about us is that our taxes are paying for Scott Morrison’s department to either hide facts, distort facts, or just plain lie about what is going on.
The government that claims a “budget emergency” still needs to find $8 Million of spare change to pay spin doctors to cover the arse of this Minister for Arrogance and Immigration.
I hope the family of Leo Seemanpillai know that not all Australians are like the Coalition.
Some of us are human.
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Good work Peter.
Sad story of the death of a good man, Peter. Still thinking of others even as he was contemplating the most horrific way to commit suicide.
Scott Morrison would have to be the worst & most abominable Immigration Minister there has ever been which is saying something after Ruddock & Andrews. Trouble is, he seems to relish his role as a flint-hearted, non-empathic minister with the power of life & death over the most helpless of human beings. Nastiness personified. How dare he claim to be a “good christian”. Hope he can sleep well. If he does he almost certainly lacks a conscience.
I hate to rain on Peter’s parade here but the policy being used by Morrison was started by Gillard and Roxon, a policy suggested by three racist ignorant public servants designed to give her the stated aim of STOPPING THE BOATS, of denying asylum, of making people wait in limbo for 5 years without access to a claim and then she cut off the mainland to asylum claimants who come by sea.
She had many suicides on her watch, most of the drownings occurred due to her racist interference with the people who are supposed to save people and those are all outlined by Marg Hutton on SIEVX and by Tony Kevin in his book Reluctant Rescuers.
Many killed themselves on her watch, the prisons became as brutal as in Ruddock’s days, she trafficked pregnant women to Manus and three of them lost their babies and it was Gillard who wrote the directive that Sri Lankans be denied process and sent straight back to Sri Lanka’s killing fields.
It was Gillard who wanted to ship refugees to Malaysia and the sign Peter is using was the reason Morrison said refugees should never be sent there, thank goodness the High court scuttled it.
Dozens of people have died in our concentration camps, our media don’t much care because according to our media no punishment is too harsh for the victims of wars, persecution, genocide and other human rights atrocities if they come here by sea and pay someone to help them.
Bowen was the nasty little prick who wrote the laws that said any protests in prison would be punished with denial of protection, Bowen was the nasty little prick whose ASIO laws are now being used against 47 innocent people to keep them jailed for life.
It was Gillard and Roxon who deleted the high court, deleted the rule of law, all human rights, all legal rights and all right to life for refugees.
Morrison is the manifestation of that evil policy.
That’s fine Marilyn, it wasn’t a parade I was seeking, and Labor need to recheck their moral compass on this issue as well, after all Labor opened Manus Island despite criticism from the membership
WEll Peter some times a parade is needed before claiming one person or event did not cause the self-immolation of this young man, it took a great deal of incremental brutality.
Marilyn, we know what you are going to rabbit on about & your rabid obsession with Julia Gillard. I for one do avoid reading your frothing-at-the-mouth, foul-worded diatribes as it never changes. So I suggest you just post your name & we shall fill in the blanks without you going to the effort of typing your guff. Save us all time..
Thats not rain, just the usual spray of misty spit to break up the parade. Leo Seemanpillai showed how much he valued life when even although the pain and ongoing terror became unbearable for him he wanted not let his life be for nothing and five strangers, in a country that was rejecting him, have the possibility to have new lives from his generous organ donation and i imagine he must have known that statistically it was very likely that one or more of those people would wanted him deported. I am an not a ‘believer’ but if the values of Christian morality mean anything he showed himself to be a fine moral human being even when in the greatest pain. It is more than can be said for many of the ‘Christians’ who have taken control of our government and much of the media and instead seem better suited as inquisitors for the church, burning and torturing and cleansing than compassion healing and love for their fellow man. Scott Morrison sad faced diminishing dismissal of Leo Seemanpillai is as expected from a minister who is arguably an accessory after the fact in concealing a murder on Manus Island. All in a day in the life of an Inquisitor. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4d/Contemporary_illustration_of_the_Auto-da-fe_held_at_Validolid_Spain_21-05-1559..jpg
https://i.imgur.com/uhAXoLl.jpg
clean link Auto da fe Valiolid above thanks peter.
Why are the facts that this was a long time coming and his death was caused mostly by Gillard and her lazy no advantage rule so unpalatable?
Morrison is using Gillard’s laws, he has not legislated a single thing and that is indisputable.
It”s pathetic to me that some still want to let Gillard off the hook but here is a reminder of how she and Bowen behaved.
this is what pisses me off about political discourse in this country currently, no situation is off limits for political “I told you so” statements. Here we have a person who set himself alight and then donates his organs, an absolutely senseless and selfless chain of events and all some correspondents here can do is have an argument about who is going to say what. Did you ever stop to consider that this young man caame here because one of the freedoms he found here was the ability to freely state your mind? You dont have to agree with what the other says, but they have the freedom to say it. All you are doing by these ridiculous arguments is lessening the statement this young man made. You are all obviously horriied that this young man felt it necesary to go to this length to have a voice. You should be joining together to amplify what he was trying to convey to the people that drove him to it.
Well said indeed Oldfart
http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article.aspx?aeid=41531#.U460BuAiNAh
OK this drove him to it. It didn’t happen over night and it started with Bob Hawke way back in 1989 when he invented the queue lie to refuse a few hundred Cambodians refuge.
The self-immolation is not the first, Mr Shahzad Kayani did it in 2000 on the steps of parliament house and spent about 100 days in agony before dying.
His beef was Ruddock’s refusal to allow the reunion of his family because one child had cerebral palsy.
Step by step, increment by increment Australia has become a lawless, cruel, inhuman and degrading state with the federal parliament being little better than the rubber stamp variety beloved of dictators when it comes to human rights abuses.
Hi Maruilyn,
I appreciate you are very angry about this issue, as are many other people in this country. Someone once told me, that if you engage in a conversation. discussion or argument and show anger, you have lost the audience, as they switch off. I think that if you engaged with people and put forward ways or possible ways to address issues rather than laying blame at peoples feet you might get further. You appear to assume that people are not aware of past rulings, policies and what have you, but they are. I for one would be really interested in what ways you think these things should be addressed, because I have heard you many times having a go at people who made the decisions, but I would be interested in how we could go about changing the politicians views and outlooks. There is no point in fighting the system, but people need to become savvy and use the system to defeat itself.
It would be wonderful if we had the same as the americans in regards to a petitioning system, where after a given number of signatories sign the petition and the political system has to take note and address the concern raised in the petition. Before you think I am a yankeephile, I’m not. In my opinion they have only ever got 3 things right and they are the opening sentence of their constition,( we the people) their petitioning system and peanut butter (my doctor disagrees)
enjoy your day
Oldfart, there is no fucking issue to put forward. The refugee convention is a legally binding international treaty co-authored by Australia and brought into force when we signed.
What the hell is the stupid point of endlessly arguing the lies the moron pollies and media tell us.
What is the point with engaging with anyone who doesn’t understand the basic non-derogable right to seek asylum from persecution?