National Differences in Political Suicide Events (PSEs)

The Economist:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/banyan/2011/04/chinas_tibetan_problem

THE open wound that is Tibetan resentment of Chinese rule refuses to heal. According to accounts seeping out of China, it has been bleeding profusely for some six weeks now at Kirti, a Tibetan monastery in Sichuan province. Kirti is in Aba prefecture, which Tibetans regard as Amdo, a part of historic Tibet. Two Tibetans in their sixties are reported to have died after being beaten by security forces on April 21st. Their deaths came as the monastery was raided and more than 300 of its nearly 2,500 monks were detained for purposes of “legal education”.
The confrontation started with the death of a young monk, Rigzin Phuntsog, variously described as 16 and 20 years old, who set himself on fire on March 16th. His self-immolation was to mark the third anniversary of bloody anti-Chinese riots in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa. The 2008 riots were followed by a harsh crackdown on dissent across what China calls its “Tibet Autonomous Region” as well as in ethnic-Tibetan areas of adjoining provinces, including Sichuan and Qinghai.

First, by using this quote, I have just deep-sixed my blog in China. Actually, I've mentioned this before, so I have been exiled to those cold, western lands which Du Fu - or Li Po - wrote about... well beyond the Great Wall. Ah, well...

Second, the real point of interest is Suicide for Political Expression:

Buddhist tradition suicides kill themselves, as seen in Tibet and back in South Vietnam. A moral agent makes a willing political statement and limits the killing to themselves.

Islamic tradition suicides incorporates the suicide bomber as well as the individual, Bouazizi.
There is a political statement by the willing death of one and the unwilling deaths of others.

Western Christian tradition has the Unibomber, the Weathermen, and various anarchist groups as well as, but not so many political suicides that are individual. The Western tradition tends more to the unwilling deaths of others.

Judaism in the form of Zionist groups - such as Irgun - tends more to group violence, and hence to the unwilling deaths of others.

I think that the inclusion of the deaths of unwilling bystanders tends to occur in societies where there is such a need for more emphasis to be given to the political statement intended; a desire to amplify what is being said, and what better way to get someone's attention than killing a number of passers-by, for the mere death of one individual can not be heard.
This indicates those societies tend to ignore the power of an individual life. I know they may preach that life is sacred, but they tend to deprecate the individual at the expense of the communal: the story of salvation is that of the tribe or the nation or the large, encompassing group.
I believe I catch a glimpse of that "socialism" of religion in the belief in American exceptionalism, wherein it is the nation-state which is the particular object of divine interest.

I may be wrong headed in this. I merely found it interesting.
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