Self-harm as protest?

Question

Lately I've been reading the news about how a student in Tunisia set himself on fire, and that led to the wave of protests that eventually led to the ousting of the Tunisian President.

Between this, other self-immolation protests in South Vietnam in the 60's, hunger strikes in Guantanamo and Martin Luther King in the 60's and Gandhi in the 30's, and other such acts of harming oneself to make a political point, what I want to know is how exactly does this work?  In other words, how can harming yourself advance your cause?

Anonymous · Accepted Answer

Publicity. But you need to go big. Hunger strikes don't attract attention. Lighting yourself has been done to death... You need something no one has ever seen before. And all you'll get is a front page newspaper story about it if you're lucky.

ajw · Answer

Not to mention a student shooting people due to being bullied & mental probs.Now it seems I read about a new strict policy on bulling everyday in the paper.And theres proably many more changes made due to people dying.Why cant they fix these problems before hand ?

? · Answer

Yeah.  The libs should have tried this when Bush was in office.  All of them.

Self-harm as protest?

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