Lighting a fire

Muhammad Abouzizi is hardly known in the Philippines. However, in the African and Arab world, he is deemed a hero and was, literally, the spark that led to the toppling of regimes in Tunisia and Egypt.

His memory continues to fuel the social reform movements in Libya, Bahrain, and throughout the Middle East. The spark metaphor is both unfortunate and incredibly apropos because Muhammad ignited the Tunisian revolution by actually setting himself on fire: on Dec. 17, 2010, Muhammad, who was a fruit vendor in the Tunisian black market, stood before the office of the Governor, poured gasoline on himself, and set himself ablaze.

It was an act of anger, desperation, and, by some accounts, humiliation. Previously, aside from the regular harassment from corrupt policemen asking for bribes to allow him to sell fruits without a government permit, a female government officer had taken away the weighing scale used by Muhammad at his fruit cart and, according to some reports, the woman had slapped him as well.

Muhammad was a college graduate and thus would have aspired to obtaining a white-collar job. However, because of the poverty, unemployment, and corruption in Tunisia, he was forced to scrape a living selling fruits in the streets as an illegal vendor. His aspirations shattered and with the daily humiliation that he faced at the hands of callous and crooked government officials, something inside him snapped. It was simply too much to bear and so he decided to commit suicide in such a dramatic and symbolic fashion.

Though unintended, Muhammad’s act of self-immolation eventually led to the toppling of Tunisia’s longtime leader, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, and planting the seeds of democratic reform in the North African State.

Similarly, in Tree, F. Sionil Jose discusses the suicide of Tio Baldo’s, who killed himself out of frustration at the flawed justice system in the Philippines. Having obtained an education as a surveyor, he filed a case against Don Vincente, an amalgam of the dirty politicians and corrupt hacienderos that seem to populate every corner of our archipelago, a landowner who had grabbed the farmlands of tenants in Northern Luzon by various illegal means, among them by falsifying the boundaries and area of his haciendas. Don Vicente wins the case by paying off the judge and out of a deep sense of frustration, Tio Baldo hangs himself.

Sionil writes poignantly: “A man’s suicide is the ultimate violence he can fling against the granite circumstances he cannot vanquish. It is a lonely and desperate act of supreme courage, not weakness. But it is also an admission of total failure, and the destruction of the self is the end of one’s struggle, an end wherefrom there would be no rebirth or resurrection...But when a person commits suicide, he does not do violence only to himself; he inflicts his death upon those whom he least considered would be so afflicted.”

However, despite the poignancy of both Muhammad’s and the fictional Tio Baldo’s acts of suicide, it would be a mistake to label their suicides as intrinsically heroic. Firstly, the great religious traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam view the act of self-abnegation as a sinful act.

In fact, the Holy Koran has specific injunctions against self-killing: “And do not kill yourselves. Surely, Allah is Most Merciful to you.” (Surah An-Nisa Verse 29)

“And do not throw yourselves in destruction.” (Surah Al-Baqarah Verse 195)

Secondly, when the Tunisian fruit vendor decided to set himself on fire, it wasn’t out of political or heroic fervor but rather out of desperation. So the heroism in the Tunisian experience was done by the living — the Tunisians who were galvanized by Muhammad’s story and who united and succeeded in toppling an autocratic government.

As shown by Muhammad’s story, self-killing is often a cry for help or a dramatic symbol of desperation and the final act of defiance to what the person sees as injustice or oppression. In the ’60s, Buddhist monks similarly set fire to themselves in Vietnam to protest the war.

In the Philippines, we have the story of Angie Reyes. It was shocking, unbelievable news on Feb. 8, 2011, when the story out about former Defense Secretary Reyes committing suicide in front of his mother’s grave began to circulate. Prior to his death, many in the media had labeled him the villain for allegedly receiving bribes upon his retirement from military service. After his death, perhaps due to Filipino kindness or remorse, some labeled his death as heroic and that it was an attempt to protect the military as an institution, which he was said to have dearly loved.

Certainly, we cannot fathom what goes on in the mind of a person who decides to kill himself and so we will never know the real reason for Secretary Reyes’ suicide. And, ultimately, it shouldn’t matter. Because, as in the Abouzizi case, the real heroism should emanate from the living, the people left behind by the person who committed suicide. It is senseless to glorify self-killing but if the act can spur a people to address the injustices and oppressions which are the root of the suicide, as in the Tunisian case, then the suicide may afterwards attain some semblance of utility and relevance after all.

Thus, we pay respect to the death of Secretary Reyes not through flowers and speeches but rather by reforming the military and punishing military men who are corrupt and those private businessmen who participate in the corruption.

We cannot judge whether Abouzizi or Reyes were heroes or not, or whether their deaths were heroic. Let’s leave that to divine judgment, with the hope for mercy and compassion. However, what we can choose is how we will react to their deaths. Will their deaths spur us to reform our society into a more transparent, fair, and decent society? Or will we just shrug our shoulders, say that their deaths were a terrible waste, and accept the status quo?

To do the former is an act of true courage and heroism. To do the latter is worse than suicide because apathy is always far more insidious and destructive than any act of desperation.