Immolation

A woman who tried to light herself on fire in front of a Vietnamese official was sentenced to five years in prison. The sentencing of Ngoc Hanh Dang Nguyen came 13 months after she was arrested after trying to set herself afire before Vietnamese Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dzung as he spoke at a hotel. She was convicted of arson and assault.

BEIJING - As China launched its 18th Communist Party congress on Thursday, a record number of Tibetans immolated themselves in a stark illustration of the internal tensions facing the country's new leadership. Over a 48-hour period, at least five Tibetans were reported to have set themselves on fire in western China. Most of them were teenagers. As many as 6,000 people demonstrated against the government Thursday afternoon in Tongren, a monastery town in Qinghai province, after two self-immolations - a 23-year-old woman on Wednesday and a young former monk on Thursday, exile groups reported.

"It is a lie to say that I am not afraid, or to claim that my goal is martyrdom. But . . . like every responsible person of the Third World, I know that he who has not suffered death does not know life." --Neusha Farrahi Paradoxically, now that strangers finally want to know what Neusha Farrahi has to say, he lies in silent agony with deep burns over 70% of his body. A respirator and medication keep him from speaking. No one can say for sure if he will survive.

BEIJING - In the last three months, two of Thinlay Gyatso's relatives have set themselves on fire in protest against Chinese rule, and the 31-year-old Tibetan academic is still sorting out his conflicted emotions over their suicides. If any of them had confided their plans, he said, he would have tried to stop them. "From the beginning, I said this was not a good thing to burn yourself," he said. On the other hand, he acknowledged a swell of pride in his relatives - one of them a 26-year-old mother of two young children who was his second cousin, the other an uncle who was in his 50s. "People respect the ones who have immolated themselves.

Early in the morning as her father was saying his prayers, 20-year-old Ahbeda -- engaged to marry her first cousin at the family's bidding -- apparently doused herself with fuel and set herself afire. A few hours later, she was swaddled in bandages in the primitive burn unit at Herat Public Hospital, writhing in pain and gasping for air, with burns covering her entire body. Her hair was mostly singed off, her lips nearly gone, her face a blackened blur, her odds of survival slim.

A 27-year-old man yelling anti-government slogans set himself on fire and jumped to his death today from a building at Seoul's Sogang University to protest the fatal beating of a student by police last month. The self-immolation by Kim Ki Sul was the fourth in less than two weeks amid nationwide protests demanding the resignation of President Roh Tae Woo and broader reforms. Two others have died and one is in critical condition.

Two men set themselves on fire outside the French Embassy in London on Friday, bringing to nine the number of people who have set themselves ablaze to protest France's crackdown on an Iranian opposition group. French police said they have detained 208 people for violating the country's new ban on protests by supporters of the Moujahedeen Khalq. All but 18 have been released. The government said the ban, imposed Wednesday, is an effort to stop people from setting themselves on fire.

Harry J. Gaynor admits he spent many restless nights wondering whether he should have anything to do with a book about Charles Rothenberg, the former New York waiter who spent almost seven years in prison for severely burning his son, David, in a Buena Park motel room in 1983. As founder and president of the National Burn Victim Foundation in Orange, N.J.

Neusha Farrahi, an Iranian man of letters who set himself afire Sept. 20 to protest the executions and human rights abuses under the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's regime since 1979, is being hailed by many Iranian exiles here and around the world as a martyr. He died Friday, 12 days after he set himself afire during a Westwood protest. He was 31. An intellectual of strong leftist politics, Farrahi's action shocked many of the estimated 200,000 to 400,000 exiles here. Many praised his courage.

An Iranian bookstore owner set himself afire and suffered serious burns during a demonstration outside the Federal Building in Westwood on Sunday in protest of the scheduled visit of the president of Iran to the United Nations this week, friends said. "A ring of friends gathered around the burning man preventing deputies from coming to his aid for several minutes," Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy Steve Lee said.

Shopkeepers peer out from storefronts festooned with traditional Tibetan prayer flags at platoons of armed police, some carrying an unusual addition to their riot regalia: fire extinguishers. A string of self-immolations by young Buddhist monks in Sichuan province is unnerving the Chinese government and giving a new, more radical momentum to the Tibetan protest movement. On Monday, the ninth young Tibetan — and the first woman — killed herself in the small town of Aba by self-immolation in a protest against Chinese rule.

Long Beach authorities on Friday recommended that arson charges be filed against a man who doused himself with gasoline and then set himself afire in Long Beach City Hall a day earlier. Nancy Pratt, spokeswoman for the Long Beach Police Department, said the city's police-and-fire arson unit was expected to present charges of attempted arson and arson with great bodily injury to the Los Angeles County district attorney's office next week.

A 50-year-old Fountain Valley man walked into Long Beach City Hall on Thursday afternoon and set himself on fire, authorities said, prompting an evacuation of hundreds of workers from the downtown high-rise. The man was hospitalized in critical condition. A large white shopping bag containing a box-shaped item -- initially thought to have been dropped by the man -- was discovered near the scene, briefly prompting a bomb scare.

The church was full so he did it outside, just after communion. Had a can of gasoline under his coat, drenched himself and went alight. The janitor saw a flash and yelled for help. The flaming man stumbled to the ground as worshipers rushed past and a nun knelt beside him, praying and touching a sliver of his unburned skin. Someone said he whispered, "Is Jesus here?" The Rev. Roland Weisselberg died the next day.

A Falls Church, Va., man who worked as a federal informant on terrorism set himself on fire in front of the White House on Monday, hours after announcing his suicide attempt and citing his growing despondency over how the FBI managed his case. Mohamed Alanssi, 52, approached the northwest guardhouse on Pennsylvania Avenue about 2:05 p.m. EST and asked the security detail to deliver a note to President Bush.

It's a troubling trend in a country with a fiery past: young, despondent Czechs committing suicide by setting themselves ablaze. According to Czech media, five have died and 11 others attempted suicide but survived. The wave of burnings has revived painful memories of two students whose death by self-immolation in 1969 came to symbolize resistance to the communist regime of the time.

A radical student set himself afire and jumped from a second-story window on a college campus Friday to protest the fatal police beating of a fellow demonstrator. The immolation, the third by a student protester this week, came as radicals planned nationwide protests today demanding that the South Korean government disband a specially trained police unit accused of the beating death last week. The student who set himself ablaze Friday died several hours later at Yonsei University.

About 35,000 protesters demanding the ouster of President Roh Tae Woo battled riot police with rocks and firebombs Sunday and today in South Korea's two largest cities. A high school student who set himself on fire two weeks ago died, bringing to 10 the number of dissidents dead in more than five weeks of protests calling for democratic reforms.

An Iranian woman who set herself on fire in London last week to protest a French roundup of Iranian exiles has died. The National Council of Resistance of Iran said Nada Hassani, a computer programmer raised in Canada, died with her parents at her side. Hospital officials confirmed the death. Hassani, 25, set herself ablaze outside the French Embassy in London after French police swooped on the NCRI's military arm, the Moujahedeen Khalq, over possible links to terrorism.

Two men set themselves on fire outside the French Embassy in London on Friday, bringing to nine the number of people who have set themselves ablaze to protest France's crackdown on an Iranian opposition group. French police said they have detained 208 people for violating the country's new ban on protests by supporters of the Moujahedeen Khalq. All but 18 have been released. The government said the ban, imposed Wednesday, is an effort to stop people from setting themselves on fire.