Man burns himself alive to protest war
Man burns himself alive to protest war
By Associated Press
-- fotdmike11/05/06 — -CHICAGO (AP) — Malachi Ritscher envisioned his death as one full of purpose. He carefully planned the details, mailed a copy of his apartment key to a friend, created to-do lists for his family. On his Web site, the 52-year-old experimental musician who’d fought with depression even penned his obituary.
At 6:30 a.m. on Nov. 3 — four days before an election caused a seismic shift in Washington politics — Ritscher, a frequent anti-war protester, stood by an off-ramp in downtown Chicago near a statue of a giant flame, set up a video camera, doused himself with gasoline and lit himself on fire. “Here is the statement I want to make. … “If one death can atone for anything, in any small way, to say to the world: I apologize for what we have done to you, I am ashamed for the mayhem and turmoil caused by my country.”
“This man killed himself in such a painful way … to get our attention…,” said Jennifer Diaz, a grad student researching Ritscher’s life. “I’m not going to sit by, and I can’t sit by, and let this go unheard.”
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