Forced suicide is a method of execution where the victim is coerced into committing
suicideSuicide is the intentional killing of one's self. Many dictionaries also note the metaphorical sense of "willful destruction of one's self-interest"...
to avoid facing an alternative option they perceive as much worse, such as suffering
tortureTorture, according to the United Nations Convention Against Torture, is:In addition to state-sponsored torture, individuals or groups may be motivated to inflict torture on others for similar reasons to those of a state; however, the motive for torture can also be for the sadistic gratification of...
or having friends or family members imprisoned or tortured. Another common form historically has been deliberately providing a condemned individual with a weapon and a brief period in which to commit honorable suicide if they choose before they are executed.
Forced suicide is a method of execution where the victim is coerced into committing
suicideSuicide is the intentional killing of one's self. Many dictionaries also note the metaphorical sense of "willful destruction of one's self-interest"...
to avoid facing an alternative option they perceive as much worse, such as suffering
tortureTorture, according to the United Nations Convention Against Torture, is:In addition to state-sponsored torture, individuals or groups may be motivated to inflict torture on others for similar reasons to those of a state; however, the motive for torture can also be for the sadistic gratification of...
or having friends or family members imprisoned or tortured. Another common form historically has been deliberately providing a condemned individual with a weapon and a brief period in which to commit honorable suicide if they choose before they are executed. Because the victim's cause of death would be registered as suicide, the act also carries an addition benefit as
black propagandaBlack propaganda is false information and material that purports to be from a source on one side of a conflict, but is actually from the opposing side...
against individuals for whom an open execution would generate unwanted attention due to their position or influence.
In ancient Greece and Rome
Forced suicide was a common means of execution in ancient
GreeceAncient Greece is the civilisation belonging to the period of Greek history lasting from the Greek Dark Ages ca. 1100 BC and the Dorian invasion, to 146 BC and the Roman conquest of Greece after the Battle of Corinth. It is generally considered to be the seminal culture which provided the...
and
RomeAncient Rome was a civilization that grew out of a small agricultural community founded on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 10th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea, it became one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
. As a mark of respect it was generally reserved for aristocrats sentenced to death; the victims would either drink
hemlockConium is a genus of two species of highly poisonous perennial herbaceous flowering plants in the family Apiaceae, native to Europe and the Mediterranean region , and to southern Africa ....
or fall on their swords. Economic motivations promoted some suicides in ancient Rome. A person who was condemned to death would forfeit property to the government. People could evade that provision and let the property pass to their heirs by committing suicide prior to arrest.
Probably the most famous forced suicide is that of the philosopher
Socrates Socrates was a Classical Greek philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known only through the classical accounts of his students...
, who drank hemlock after his trial for allegedly corrupting the youth of
AthensAthens , the capital and largest city of Greece, dominates the Attica periphery; as one of the world's oldest cities, its recorded history spans around 3,400 years....
. The
StoicStoicism was a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded in Athens by Zeno of Citium in the early . The stoics considered destructive emotions to be the result of errors in judgment, and that a sage, or person of "moral and intellectual perfection," would not undergo such emotions...
philosopher
SenecaLucius Annaeus Seneca was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, dramatist, and in one work humorist, of the Silver Age of Latin literature. He was tutor and later advisor to emperor Nero...
also killed himself in response to a request by his pupil, the
Roman EmperorThe Roman emperor was the ruler of the Roman State during the imperial period . The Romans had no single term for the office: Latin titles such as imperator , augustus, caesar and princeps were all associated with it...
NeroNero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus , born Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, also called Nero Claudius Caesar Drusus Germanicus, was the fifth and last Roman emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Nero was adopted by his great uncle Claudius to become heir to the throne...
, who himself was forced to commit suicide at a later date. Other famous forced suicides include those of
BrutusBrutus is a Roman cognomen used by several politicians of the Junii family, especially in the Roman Republic. The plural of Brutus is Bruti, and the vocative form is Brute, as immortalized in the quotation "Et tu, Brute?"....
,
Mark AntonyMarcus Antonius , known in English as Mark Antony, was a Roman politician and General. He was an important supporter and the loyal friend of Gaius Julius Caesar as a military commander and administrator, being Caesar's second cousin, once removed, by his mother Julia Antonia...
and Emperor
OthoFor other uses, see Otho .Marcus Salvius Otho , also called Marcus Salvius Otho Caesar Augustus, was Roman Emperor from 15 January to 16 April 69, the second emperor of the Year of the four emperors....
.
In Asia
Forced suicides have occurred in
ancient ChinaChinese civilization originated in various city-states along the Yellow River valley in the Neolithic era. The written history of China begins with the Shang Dynasty . Turtle shells with ancient Chinese writing from the Shang Dynasty have been carbon dated to as early as 1500 BCE...
, where generals who were responsible for major debacles that seriously brought a downfall in the course of a
stateA sovereign state is a political association with effective internal and external sovereignty over a geographic area and population which is not dependent on, or subject to any other power or state...
's history would be held liable and were given orders to commit suicide. It was also the most common way to execute female criminals, as it was considered more humane than beheading.
The ancient practice of
satiSatī is a funeral practice among some Hindu communities in which a recently widowed woman would either voluntarily or by use of force and coercion immolate herself on her husband’s funeral pyre...
, in which a recently-widowed woman would immolate herself on her husband’s funeral pyre, generally is not considered a type of
honor killingAn honor killing is the murder of a family or clan member by one or more fellow family members, where the murderers believe the victim to have brought dishonor upon the family, clan, or community...
. However, the extent up to which Sati was a purely voluntary act or one that was coerced is actively debated. There have been some incidences in recent times, such as the
Roop KanwarRoop Kanwar was an 18-year old Rajput woman who committed sati on 4 September 1987 at Deorala village of Sikar district in Rajasthan, India...
case, in which forced sati was
suspected. Additional cases are under investigation, though no evidence of forced suicide has yet been found.
Japanese
seppukuis a form of Japanese ritual suicide by disembowelment. Seppuku was originally reserved only for samurai. Part of the samurai honor code, seppuku was used voluntarily by samurai to die with honor rather than fall into the hands of their enemies, as a form of capital punishment for samurai who have...
falls into this category. The culture of
Bushido, meaning "Way of the Warrior", is a Japanese code of conduct and a way of the samurai life, loosely analogous to the concept of chivalry. It originates from the samurai moral code and stresses frugality, loyalty, martial arts mastery, and honor unto death. Born of two main influences, the violent...
practiced by the
samuraiis the term for the military nobility of pre-industrial Japan. According to translator William Scott Wilson: "In Chinese, the character 侍 was originally a verb meaning to wait upon or accompany a person in the upper ranks of society, and this is also true of the original term in Japanese, saburau...
expected them to ritually kill themselves if found disloyal, sparing a
daimyois a generic term referring to the powerful territorial lords in premodern Japan who ruled most of the country from their vast, hereditary land holdings...
or
shogun is a military rank and historical title for Hereditary Commanders in Chief of the Armed Forces of Japan. The modern rank is equivalent to a Generalissimo...
the indignity of executing a follower. This was especially the case in the
Edo, literally: bay-door, "estuary", ), also romanized as Yedo or Yeddo, is the former name of the Japanese capital Tokyo, and was the seat of power for the Tokugawa shogunate which ruled Japan from 1603 to 1868...
period, and
Asano Naganoriwas the daimyo of the Akō Domain in Japan . His title was Takumi no Kami . He is known as the person who triggered a series of incidents retold in a story known as Chushingura, one of the favourite themes of kabuki, joruri and Japanese books and films.He was born in Edo as the eldest son of Asano...
was a clear example.
In modern Europe
Another famous example is the forced suicide of
Erwin RommelErwin Johannes Eugen Rommel , was perhaps the most famous German Field Marshal of World War II....
, a field marshal in the
Second World WarWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
German Army. After Rommel lost faith in Germany's ability to win the war, and came under suspicion for having taken part in the
July 20, 1944 plotThe 20 July plot of 1944 was a failed attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler, the leader of Nazi Germany, inside his "Wolf's Lair" field headquarters near Rastenburg, East Prussia. The plot was the culmination of the efforts of the German Resistance to overthrow the Nazi regime...
to kill
Adolf HitlerAdolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , popularly known as the Nazi Party...
, he was forced to commit suicide. Due to Rommel's popularity with the German people, Hitler gave him an option to commit suicide with
cyanideA cyanide is any chemical compound that contains the cyano group , which consists of a carbon atom triple-bonded to a nitrogen atom. Inorganic cyanides are hydrogen cyanide salts in which cyanide is generally the anion CN
-. Organic compounds that have a -C≡N functional group bonded to...
or face dishonor and retaliation against his family and staff. Since the guilty verdict had already been entered, the option of facing trial was hopeless, and thus, in order to save his family and his honor, he was forced to take cyanide.
During World War II there were many forced suicides in different military and paramilitary organizations. There is evidence of military failures requiring suicide as a better option than court martial, for example in the
Winter WarThe Winter War was a military conflict between the Soviet Union and Finland. It began with a Soviet offensive on 30 November 1939, three months after the German invasion of Poland and the start of World War II, and ended on 13 March 1940 with the Moscow Peace Treaty...
and at the
Battle of StalingradThe Battle of Stalingrad was a battle of World War II between Nazi Germany and its allies and the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad in southwestern Russia. The battle took place between 17 July 1942 and 2 February 1943....
. Several under
Adolf HitlerAdolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , popularly known as the Nazi Party...
's regime also committed suicide.
Friedrich PaulusFriedrich Wilhelm Ernst Paulus was an officer in the German military from 1910 to 1943, attaining the rank of Generalfeldmarschall during World War II. He is most known for commanding the Sixth Army's assault on Stalingrad during Operation Blue in 1942...
was promoted with the implication that he would die in futile military action or commit suicide. Suicide missions, in which volunteers were asked for, are well reported in fiction, but levels of compulsion are hard to assess.
As a substitute for honor killings
A forced suicide may be a substitute of an
honor killingAn honor killing is the murder of a family or clan member by one or more fellow family members, where the murderers believe the victim to have brought dishonor upon the family, clan, or community...
when a woman violates the
namusNamus is an ethical category, a virtue, in Middle Eastern Muslim patriarchal character. It is a strongly gender-specific category of relations within a family described in terms of honor, attention, respect/respectability, and modesty...
in conservative Islamic societies. According to a
BBCBBC News, formerly BBC News and Current Affairs, is the department within the British Broadcasting Corporation responsible for the corporation's news-gathering and production of news programmes on BBC television, radio and online....
report, the
United NationsThe United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and the achieving of world peace...
is, as of 2006, investigating reports of forced suicides of women in
TurkeyTurkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey
, is a Eurasian country that stretches across the Anatolian peninsula in Western Asia and Thrace in the Balkan region of southeastern Europe...
.