Why call him a “suicide bomber”? Suicide is not about what the Taliban praises as “revenge”.
It is not a feeling of celebration. This was not suicide!
In WWII the Japanese Kamikaze pilots called their
flight into a ship as a “body attack”, but the English language called them “suicide
pilots”.
We have to stop
calling chosen death in war as “suicide”. Suicide is very different by the people – here and around the world – who take
their own life because they don’t feel there is anything else to live for. A
soldier who has played a “body attack” – like the Taliban person in Lahore –
didn’t think that way. He thought that he
was fighting!
The Sydney Morning Herald last year spoke about the “'Alarming' rise in suicide deaths by former military personnel”.
That story opened eyes about 13 ex-service men who killed themselves in the
five months January-May 2015. Aaron Gray, an Iraq war veteran who is suffering
PTSD, said "We can't bring them back
but I am doing my best to ensure their deaths have not been in vain."
Would anyone want to bring back the Taliban soldiers who committed “body
attacks” in Lahore?
Why call them “suicide bombers”?
The
News last month wrote an article titled “Suicide has claimed more Australian soldiers’ lives than any war since 1999”. David
Wiseman, a former military investigator, committed suicide in 2006. He was also
suffering from PTSD. Very few people understand that, understand why veterans unwound
from the public life around them. 239 veterans committed suicide since 1999. We
mourned. Who would want to “save” the ISIS “body attackers”?
Why call them “suicide bombers”?
Do you
know about Aboriginal suicides? Creative Spirits wrote “Suicide was unknown to Aboriginal people prior to invasion. Appalling
living conditions and past traumas have led to a suicide rate that by far
exceeds that of non-Aboriginal people.” Suicide is possibly the single
biggest killer of Aboriginal people. If this was how the Taliban or ISIS men felt,
why would they kill themselves in the middle of what they call a war?
Why call them “suicide bombers”?
Wikipaedia defined suicide as “the act of intentionally causing one's own death.
Risk factors include mental illness such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia,
personality disorders, alcoholism, or drug abuse. Others are impulsive acts due
to stress such as from financial difficulties, troubles with relationships, or bullying.”
That sounds like sad reasons for committing suicide. Suicide in Australia includes farmers, agricultural workers, police, construction
workers, transport workers, builders, electricians and, said earlier,
ex-soldiers and Aboriginals.
It doesn’t sound like some
soldier thinking he’s done right, so why call them “suicide bombers”?
It is
time that we come around to understanding the use of the word “suicide”. In our
country, in predominantly the entire world, where people are committing suicide,
they are taking their lives because they don’t
see any future. The “body attacks” are done by men whose army does see a future, preferably, they
think, better for them. It is not
suicide. It shouldn’t ever be called
suicide.
Please,
ABC and any other news group on the TV, radio, internet, newspaper, magazines
or any other way, please stop calling war-based
individual attacks as suicide. Use “body attacks”. Use any other definition
of that event. But please stop making our people who are worn down to suicide
look like murderers.
They
are not.
Call Lifeline if you need help: 13 11 14
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