Sir, – The conclusion reached by Brendan Kelly, senior lecturer in psychiatry at UCD (March 14th), regarding the Tibetan Buddhists who committed suicide by self-immolation is tenuous and perturbing.
His statement that had there been “any other way for these practitioners to proclaim the strength of their views, they would undoubtedly have chosen it” is tenuous in that it can only be sustained by a deep knowledge of the situation and specific thought processes which led each of them to their lamentable decision.
The sad reality of such suicides is that many of them are copycat or as a result of a misguided pact. Such a pact was agreed by Prague student Jan Palach and others in early 1969 as a protest against the Soviet invasion of (the then) Czechoslovakia the previous year. Jan Palach self-immolated on January 16th, 1969 and suffered horrific burns from which he died three days later but not before he had made a, thankfully successful, plea to the other pact students to desist.
Jan Palach’s death, however noble, did nothing to hasten the withdrawal of the occupying forces. One could argue that Palach too had no other way of protesting, however it was ultimately the living dissent of people such as Václav Havel which eventually achieved Palach’s dream.
That someone holding the eminent position held by Brendan Kelly concludes in relation to suicide, however high the motives for the act, that there was no alternative is perturbing. – Yours, etc,