Digital Dying By: Justin Nobel

by Justin Nobel

Mohamed Bouaziz's self-immolation in Tunisia brought about dramatic political change. The practice has roots with Buddhist monks in Vietnam, Quakers in America and Christians in Siberia.

On December 17, 2010 a Tunisian street vendor named Mohamed Bouaziz set himself on fire, just weeks later the country's government was toppled. Seeing a human body erupt in flames is just as disturbing today as it was in 1963 when Vietnamese monk Thich Quang Duc sat still in Saigon while fellow monks doused him in gasoline and set him ablaze, an event which inspired copy-cat self-immolators around the world. But the practice by no means began there.

JAPAN'S MUMMY MONKS RISE AGAIN

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by Justin Nobel

Immediately after Lenin died his body was embalmed and placed in a mausoleum in Red Square, in the center of Moscow. Two-thirds of Russians now think he should be buried.

In the passenger seat of a car parked outside a home in Costa Mesa, California police recently found a mummy. The body belonged to a female special education teacher, down on her luck. A local real estate agent had encountered the teacher in a park and upon hearing that she had nowhere to live, offered the woman her car to sleep in. The teacher indeed began sleeping in the car, only at some point she died. The frightened real estate agent did not tell authorities about the body. Instead, she covered it up with a blanket and some clothes and placed a box of baking soda in her car to mask the smell. When police found the body the teacher had been dead for ten months and was completely mummified. She weighed just 30 pounds, “little more than skin and bones,” according to one news article. Read the rest of this entry »

by Justin Nobel

Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov served under Stalin then “disappeared” in 1939. He was executed although nearly a decade later many people were convinced he was still alive in a mental hospital. Last week, the body of a Northern Irishman who disappeared three decades ago was finally found.

After thirty years, the body of Charlie Armstrong has finally been found. The Northern Irishman was on his way home from mass in 1981 when Irish Republican Army carjackers approached him and demanded he get out of his vehicle. He refused and they shot him. A search this past July turned up the body near the town of Colgagh, in northeast Ireland. “We have longed for the day when we can bring Charlie home to give him a Christian burial,” said a family member.

Charlie Armstrong was one of 16 people abducted and killed by republican paramilitaries at the height of the violence in Northern Ireland. This group of abductees is referred to as The Disappeared, and while their lives often ended with a bullet, the families they left behind have been grieving for decades, awaiting the chance for a final farewell and a proper burial. Read the rest of this entry »

by Justin Nobel

The Shilluk of southern Sudan hold their kings responsible for drought. During prolonged periods of no rain the killing of kings is common.

Nicolae Ceausescu ruled Romania from 1974 through December 1989, when a revolution forced him and his wife Elena to flee the capitol. They headed by helicopter to Snagov, a commune north of Bucharest then fled again to Targoviste, an ancient city on the Ialomita River. Here the army ordered their helicopter to land and placed the pair under arrest. On Christmas Day, they were put on trial under charges that included illegal gathering of wealth and genocide. The trial lasted two hours; they were convicted and sentenced to death. Soldiers led the couple, whose hands were tied behind their backs with clothesline, outside the building then opened fire. The communist leader and his wife were dead.

Or were they? The entire episode was filmed but there is a brief break in the video, between the time when Ceausescu and his wife are led outside and the start of the shooting. By the time the camera comes back bullets have been fired and the couple lies on the ground. Fearing the tombs might be desecrated authorities brought the bodies during the night to Bucharest's Ghencea Cemetery, where they were buried in simple plots. Aging communist sympathizers continue to place flowers beside the graves to this day. But based on evidence like the break in the tape, the couples' three children and other critics have continued to question just who in fact was executed. For years, the group tried to obtain permission to unearth the grave but state officials wouldn't allow it. But last month, saying they had nothing to hide, authorities agreed to the exhumation. Cemetery officials dug up the wooden caskets and a team of pathologists took samples from the corpses and placed them into plastic bags. DNA tests will be performed, although results won't be available for up to six months.

In attempting to squash the rebellion that ultimately overthrew him Ceausescu and his political police killed hundreds of Romanians, brutality that seemed to justify his swift execution. One only has to look to examples like Saddam Hussein or Louis XVI of France to find other leaders, tyrants or not, who were put to death after public opinion turned against them. Sometimes, the killing of kings takes an invasion, sometimes a revolution from within, but in a remote stretch of southern Sudan, it takes a lack of rain. Read the rest of this entry »