A Fiery, and Futile, Protest

Roger LaPorte may be a name you never remember hearing. And you may not even remember the tragic incident associated with him. Just like me until a few weeks ago.

I write this, though, in memory of Roger, who died of burns, self-inflicted. He poured gasoline over himself in front of the United Nations Building in New York City and set himself afire. He died the next day, on November 10, 1965.

Why in the world would a young, 22-year-old man engage in self-immolation? In his case it was in protest over the Vietnam War, in which the U.S. was becoming increasingly involved.

Roger LaPorte, a former seminarian, was a volunteer worker with the Catholic Worker community in New York. He had also met and talked briefly with Daniel Berrigan, about whom I posted recently.

Father Berrigan was asked to officiate at a memorial service for Roger, and he did so in spite of being advised by his Catholic superiors not to do so. Shortly afterwards, Berrigan’s Jesuit superior and New York’s Cardinal Spellman ordered him to leave the country at once. He was exiled to Latin America, unable to return to the U.S. for several months.

Among other things, Berrigan questioned whether Roger’s act was a suicide. Rather, he suggested the young man’s fiery protest should perhaps be seen as an act of “misguided heroism,” the giving of life rather than the taking of life. Shortly before he died, Roger reportedly had said, “I’m against war, all wars. I did this as a religious action.”

Roger’s self-sacrifice in opposition to the Vietnam War was actually the third which occurred in the U.S., all in 1965. Earlier that year an 82-year-old woman died by self-immolation in Detroit. And just one week before Roger’s deadly protest, Norman Morrison, a 31-year-old Quaker, had set himself on fire right below Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s Pentagon office.

Unfortunately, these drastic protests failed to bring the war to a halt.

And so, three years later the shameful My Lai Massacre occurred. Five years later (in 1970) the U.S. began the questionable invasion of Cambodia. And then in 1972 Kim Phuc, “the girl in the picture” about whom I posted in July was napalmed.

Finally, eight years after Roger’s extreme protest, the war officially ended, although it was not until April 1975 that the last U.S. soldier was killed in Vietnam and the last troops left that country--largely with a loss of face for the United States. There was almost nothing positive to show for the war being prolonged all those years after the fiery protest of Robert LaPorte. What a tragic waste of lives and resources!

Now there are few protests about the U.S. war activities, which by next month will (we hope!) be only in Afghanistan. But there are significant protests continuing in the Occupy Wall Street movement.

So in addition to the war on terrorism that continues in south Asia, domestically we now see what some call “class warfare.” (And the upper class clearly seems to be winning.)

Let us hope and pray that the protests now occurring will be heeded before there is an escalation of violence, and before some protesters resort to more extreme measures.

"The Girl in the Picture"

Kim Phuc was long known as “the girl in the picture” before she was widely known by her personal name.

Phan Thi Kim Phúc (b. 1963) was the girl in the Pulitzer Prize-winning picture taken on June 8, 1972, by AP photographer Nick Ut. That graphic picture shows Kim at nine years of age running naked on a road out of her village in South Vietnam after being severely burned on her back and arms by a napalm bomb attack.

About ten years later, Ms. Phuc was admitted to medical school in Saigon, but was withdrawn by the Vietnamese government who wanted to use her for propaganda purposes. Partly because of her unhappiness with that development, at Christmastime in 1982 she converted to Christianity.

In 1986 Kim was sent to study at the University of Havana in Cuba. There she met Bui Huy Toan, another Vietnamese student, and they married in 1992. On the way back to Cuba from their honeymoon in Moscow, the airplane made a refueling stop in Newfoundland. The newlyweds left the plane and asked for political asylum in Canada, which was granted.

Kim became a Canadian citizen the following year, and she continues to live in Canada with her husband and two sons, who are now 17 and 13.

Last Monday (7/4) Kim was the keynote speaker at the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America summer conference, which met on the campus of Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, VA. I had the privilege of attending that conference and of meeting Kim and hearing her speak.

I don’t know when I have ever seen a more radiant, joyous, sweet-spirited person.

But she hasn’t always been that way. She spent years in physical pain, having seventeen operations over the twelve years after her injuries. Then, she was bitter at having been bombed in her village, of having had to suffer so much, and of having to bear such scars on her body.

She eventually realized that to be free she had to learn to forgive. She told the rapt audience who heard her speak last week, “It was hard, but I became free.”

Kim also emphasized that “forgiveness is a choice.” And it is a choice she encouraged all her listeners to make, forgiving anyone and everyone toward whom they harbor resentment or grudges.

Since hearing her speak, I have bought The Girl in the Picture: The Story of Kim Phuc, the Photograph, and the Vietnam War (2000), her biography written by Denise Chong. I am eager to learn more of her inspiring story.

From now on when I hear about Kim Phuc, I will not think of her as “the girl in the picture.” Rather, I will remember her radiant face and her marvelous message on the power of forgiveness.

And I will remember her closing words: “Don’t see the little girl calling out in pain and fear. See her as crying out for peace.”