Mass suicide is a form ofsuicide, occurring when a group of people simultaneously kill themselves. Mass suicide sometimes occurs in religious settings. In war, defeated groups may resort to mass suicide rather than being captured.Suicide pacts are a form of mass suicide that are sometimes planned or carried out by small groups of depressed or hopeless people. Mass suicides have been used as a form of political protest.[citation needed]
Attitudes towards mass suicide change according to place and circumstance. People who resort to mass suicide rather than submit to what they consider intolerable oppression sometimes become the focus of a heroic myth.[1] Such mass suicides might also win the grudging respect of the victors. On the other hand, the act of people resorting to mass suicide without being threatened – especially, when driven to this step by a charismatic religious leader, for reasons which often seem obscure – tends to be regarded far more negatively.[citation needed]
Following the destruction of the Iberian city ofIlliturgis by Roman GeneralPublius Cornelius Scipio in 206 BC, people ofAstapa – knowing they faced a similar fate – decided to burn the city with all of its treasures and then kill themselves.[2]
According to Roman historians, after theBattle of Aquae Sextiae in 102 BC, 300Teuton women committed mass suicide following their loss.[3]
At the end of the fifteen months of thesiege of Numantia in summer 133 BC, many of the defeatedNumantines preferred to kill themselves instead of surrendering to the Romans and set fire to the city.[4]
The 960 members of theSicariiJewish community atMasada collectively killed themselves in 73 AD rather than be conquered and enslaved by theRomans. Each man killed his wife and children, then the mendrew lots and killed each other until the last man killed himself. Some modern scholars have questioned this account of the events.[5][6]
In the 700s, the remnants of theMontanists were ordered by Byzantine EmperorLeo III to leave their religion and join orthodox Christianity. They refused, locked themselves in their places of worship, and set them on fire.[7]
InIndia, a mass suicide, also known asJauhar, was carried out by women and men of the defeated community, when the fall of a city besieged by the enemy forces was certain. Some of the known cases of Jauhar ofRajput women are at the fort ofChittaur in Rajasthan, in 1303, in 1535, and 1568.[8]
In 1336, when the castle ofPilėnai in theGrand Duchy of Lithuania was besieged by the army of theTeutonic Knights, the defenders, led by the DukeMargiris, realized that it was impossible to defend themselves any longer and made the decision to kill themselves, as well as to set the castle on fire in order to destroy all of their possessions, and anything of value to the enemy.[9][unreliable source?]
In 1792,Revolutionary France abolishedslavery in its Caribbean colonies. However, in 1802Napoleon decided to restore slavery. InGuadeloupe, former slaves who refused to be re-enslaved started a rebellion, led byLouis Delgrès, and for some time resisted the French Army sent to suppress them – but finally realized that they could not win, and still they refused to surrender. At theBattle of Matouba on 28 May 1802, Delgrès and his followers – 400 men and some women – ignited their gunpowder stores, killing themselves while attempting to kill as many of the French troops as possible.[10]
ABalinese mass ritual suicide is called apuputan. Major puputan occurred in 1906–1908 when Balinese kingdoms faced overwhelmingDutch colonial forces. The root of theBalinese termpuputan ispuput, meaning 'finishing' or 'ending'. It is an act that is more symbolic than strategic; the Balinese are "a people whose genius for theatre is unsurpassed" and a puputan is viewed as "the last act of a tragic dance-drama".[11]
In the final phase of the 1943Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, many of the fighters besieged in the "bunker" atMiła 18 killed themselves by ingesting poison rather than surrender to the Nazis.[13]
During the 1 April – 22 June 1945Battle of Okinawa, many of the island's civilians committed mass suicide using grenades or jumping off cliffs rather than be captured by the invading American forces. This was encouraged by the Japanese Army, which distributed hand grenades to Okinawan civilians.[16]
During the final days of the 15 June – 9 July 1944Battle of Saipan in World War II, over 1,000 Japanese citizens would die in mass suicides, many throwing themselves off the "Suicide Cliff" and "Banzai Cliff".[17]
During the 1947partition of India, 90 women committed mass suicide by drowning themselves.[18]
During theGreat Schism of the Russian Church, entire villages of Old Believers burned themselves to death in an act known as "fire baptism". This act took place over several decades. At least 20,000 Old Believers would die due to this practice.[19][20]
In 19th centuryBritish Guiana, Awakaipu, anArekuna shaman, established a settlement of indigenous tribesmen calledBekeranta (Berbice Creole Dutch meaning "Land of the White People") at the base ofKukenán-tepui. In approximately 1843 or 1844, Awakaipu instructed his followers to violently murder each other in order toreincarnate themselves as white people. Unofficial figures put the death toll at around 400, which included men, women, and children.[21][22]
On November 18, 1978, 918 people died inPeoples Temple–related incidents, led byJim Jones, inJonestown andGeorgetown in Guyana.[24][25] Using cyanide and tranquilizers, more than 200 children were murdered in the incident, and many of the elderly were forcibly injected with poison.[25] Many of the adults seem to have died willingly, though this is contested and there was dissent.[25] Jones declared the act a "revolutionary suicide", which had been used as a term within the group even prior to the massacre.[26]
From 1994 to 1997, theOrder of the Solar Temple's members began a series of mass suicides and murders, which led to roughly 74 deaths. The first occurredin Switzerland in 1994, followed by additional deaths inFrance in 1995, and finally a mass suicide inQuebec in 1997. The group was led byJoseph Di Mambro, alongsideLuc Jouret. Farewell letters were left by members, stating that they believed their deaths would be an escape from the "hypocrisies and oppression of this world".[27] Members believed that a death was a "transition" to another state of being.[28]
On March 17, 2000, several hundred members of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God died in Uganda.[30] While initially declared by the government and media a mass suicide, this was later changed to one of mass murder, due to the discovery of decomposing bodies nearby with signs of a more violent death.[31] AnthropologistRichard Vokes, who wrote a 2009 book on the case following his own investigation,Ghosts of Kanungu, criticized the official interpretation of events (that it was mass murder); he argued that it had actually been a mass suicide and that the decomposing bodies were entirely unrelated to the group.[32] John Walliss, in an analysis of the hypotheses relating to the group, viewed Vokes' theory as the most convincing.[33]
In August 2004, ten dead bodies were discovered, all in a sleeping position, inside a two-story house located at Béchard Lane in the suburb of Saint Paul,Vacoas-Phoenix on the island ofMauritius. They had been missing for a number of days, and large loans had been contracted by some of the victims a short time before their deaths. Several of them were active members of theEckankar sect. The main gate and all doors of the house had been locked from the inside, and the interior was in tidy order when police broke into the house.[34][35][36]
In 2007, inMymensingh,Bangladesh, a family of nine, all members of a novel "Adam's cult", committed mass suicide by hurling themselves under a train. Diaries recovered from the victims' home, the "Adam House", related they wanted a pure life as lived by Adam and Eve, freeing themselves from bondage to any religion, and refusing contact with any outsiders. After leavingIslam, they fell out of boundaries of any particular religion.[37][38]
In 2018, eleven family members of the Chundawat family were found dead in their home inBurari, India. Ten family members were foundhanged, while the oldest family member, the grandmother, wasstrangled. The bodies were found on 1 July 2018; in the early morning after the death. The police have ruled the deaths as mass suicide, with an angle ofshared psychosis being investigated.
In May 2019, five members of a "medieval sex cult" were found dead in what investigators believe to be a mass suicide or consensual homicide-suicide. Two bodies were discovered in a flat inWittingen and three more, including the leader, in a hotel nearPassau.[39]
In April 2023, 110 dead bodies were found in theShakahola forest, nearMalindi, Kenya.[40] Rescued survivors stated that they had been ordered to starve themselves to death by Paul Nthenge Mackenzie, leader of theMalindi cult. As of June 2024, the death toll has risen to 448.[41][42]
^Choy, Monique; Singh, Sarina (2002).Rajasthan. Lonely Planet Publications. p. 231.ISBN978-1-74059-363-2.
^Gedimino Laiškai: The Letters of Gediminas, the Great Duke of Lithuania (c. 1275–1341)
^Moitt, Bernard (1996). "Slave Women and Resistance in the French Caribbean". In Gaspar, David Barry (ed.).More Than Chattel: Black Women and Slavery in the Americas.Indiana University Press. p. 243.ISBN978-0253330178.
^Pringle, Robert (2004).Bali: Indonesia's Hindu Realm; A short history of. Short History of Asia Series.Allen & Unwin.ISBN978-1865088631.
^Astroth, Alexander (2019).Mass Suicides on Saipan and Tinian, 1944: An Examination of the Civilian Deaths in Historical Context. McFarland.ISBN9781476674568.OCLC1049791315.
