Necklacing is the practice of
summary executionA summary execution is a variety of execution in which a person is killed on the spot without trial or after a show trial. Summary executions have been practiced by the police, military, and paramilitary organizations and are associated with guerrilla warfare, counter-insurgency, terrorism, and...
and torture carried out by forcing a rubber
tyreA tire or tyre is a ring-shaped covering that fits around a wheel rim to protect it and enable better vehicle performance by providing a flexible cushion that absorbs shock while keeping the wheel in close contact with the ground...
, filled with
petrolGasoline , or petrol , is a toxic, translucent, petroleum-derived liquid that is primarily used as a fuel in internal combustion engines. It consists mostly of organic compounds obtained by the fractional distillation of petroleum, enhanced with a variety of additives. Some gasolines also contain...
, around a victim's chest and arms, and setting it on
fireFire is the rapid oxidation of a material in the chemical process of combustion, releasing heat, light, and various reaction products. Slower oxidative processes like rusting or digestion are not included by this definition....
. The victim may take up to 20 minutes to die, suffering severe burns in the process.
In South Africa
The practice became a common method of lethal
lynchingLynching is an extrajudicial execution carried out by a mob, often by hanging, but also by burning at the stake or shooting, in order to punish an alleged transgressor, or to intimidate, control, or otherwise manipulate a population of people. It is related to other means of social control that...
during disturbances in
South AfricaThe Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
in the 1980s and 1990s. The first recorded instance took place in
UitenhageUitenhage is a South African town with 275,185 inhabitants in the Eastern Cape Province. It is well known for the Volkswagen factory located there, which is the biggest car factory on the African continent. The town's name is pronounced by English speakers and in Afrikaans...
on 23 March 1985 when
African National CongressThe African National Congress is South Africa's governing Africanist political party, supported by its tripartite alliance with the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the South African Communist Party , since the establishment of non-racial democracy in April 1994. It defines itself as a...
(ANC) supporters killed a councillor who was accused of being a collaborator.
Necklacing "sentences" were sometimes handed down against alleged criminals by "people's courts" established in black
townshipThe word township is used to refer to different kinds of settlements in different countries. Township is generally associated with an urban area. However there are many exceptions to this rule. In Australia, the United States, and Canada, they may be settlements too small to be considered urban...
s as a means of enforcing their own judicial system. Necklacing was also used to punish members of the black community who were perceived as collaborators with the government. These included black policemen, town councillors and others, as well as their relatives and associates. The practice was often carried out in the name of the ANC, and Winnie Mandela, then-wife of the imprisoned
Nelson MandelaNelson Rolihlahla Mandela served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999, and was the first South African president to be elected in a fully representative democratic election. Before his presidency, Mandela was an anti-apartheid activist, and the leader of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing...
and a senior member of the ANC, even made statements that blatantly endorsed its use,. The ANC officially condemned the practice.
The first victim of necklacing, according to the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, was a young girl, Maki Skosana, in July 1985.
Photojournalist
Kevin CarterKevin Carter was an award-winning South African photojournalist and member of the Bang-Bang Club.-Early life:...
was the first to photograph a public execution by necklacing in South Africa in the mid-1980s. He later spoke of the images
He went on to say:
In 1994, Carter took his own life.
Archbishop
Desmond TutuDesmond Mpilo Tutu is a South African activist and retired Anglican bishop who rose to worldwide fame during the 1980s as an opponent of apartheid...
once famously saved a near victim of necklacing when he rushed into a large gathered crowd and threw his arms around a man accused of being a police
informantAn informant is a person who provides privileged information about a person or organization to an agency. The term is usually used within the law enforcement world, where they are officially known as confidential or criminal informants , and can often refer pejoratively to the supply of information...
, who was about to be killed. Tutu's actions, which were caught on film, caused the crowd to release the man.
Necklacing returned to South Africa in 2008 when people turned against immigrants from the rest of Africa. The influx of immigrants led to violence, looting, and murder in some of South Africa’s poorest areas; this violence included necklace lynching. This raised concerns that the latent practice might return once more as a form of public protest in the wake of service delivery failures by the ruling
African National CongressThe African National Congress is South Africa's governing Africanist political party, supported by its tripartite alliance with the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the South African Communist Party , since the establishment of non-racial democracy in April 1994. It defines itself as a...
(ANC).
Some commentators have noted that the practice of necklacing served to escalate the levels of violence during the township wars of the 1980s and early 1990s as security force members became brutalized and afraid that they might fall victim to the practice.
In other countries
This practice of lynching is found in the
CaribbeanThe Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...
country of
HaitiHaiti , officially the Republic of Haiti , is a Caribbean country. It occupies the western, smaller portion of the island of Hispaniola, in the Greater Antillean archipelago, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. Ayiti was the indigenous Taíno or Amerindian name for the island...
. It was prominently used against supporters of
Jean-Claude DuvalierJean-Claude Duvalier, nicknamed "Bébé Doc" or "Baby Doc" was the President of Haiti from 1971 until his overthrow by a popular uprising in 1986. He succeeded his father, François "Papa Doc" Duvalier, as the ruler of Haiti upon his father's death in 1971...
's dictatorship at the beginning of the democratic transition, from 1986 to 1990. There were about 45 or so at the close of 2010, including about 40 in Grand Anse department. (http://articles.cnn.com/2010-12-24/world/haiti.cholera.killings_1_cholera-epidemic-cholera-outbreak-voodoo-priests?_s=PM:WORLD)
In the early 1990s, university students in
AbidjanAbidjan is the economic and former official capital of Côte d'Ivoire, while the current capital is Yamoussoukro. it was the largest city in the nation and the third-largest French-speaking city in the world, after Paris, and Kinshasa but before Montreal...
,
Cote d'IvoireThe Republic of Côte d'Ivoire or Ivory Coast is a country in West Africa. It has an area of , and borders the countries Liberia, Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso and Ghana; its southern boundary is along the Gulf of Guinea. The country's population was 15,366,672 in 1998 and was estimated to be...
were plagued by burglars stealing from their dorms. The students took matters into their own hands by capturing the thieves, and then murdered them by placing tyres around their necks and setting the tyres on fire. Ivorian police, powerless to stop these necklacings, could do nothing but stand by and watch.
In 2006, at least one person died in
NigeriaNigeria , officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal constitutional republic comprising 36 states and its Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The country is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in...
by necklacing in the deadly
Muslim protestsThe publication of satirical cartoons of the Islamic prophet Muhammad in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten on September 30, 2005 led to violence, arrests, inter-governmental tensions, and debate about the scope of free speech and the place of Muslims in the West. Many Muslims claim that any...
over satirical cartoon drawings of
MuhammadMuhammad |ligature]] at U+FDF4 ;Arabic pronunciation varies regionally; the first vowel ranges from ~~; the second and the last vowel: ~~~. There are dialects which have no stress. In Egypt, it is pronounced not in religious contexts...
.
In
IndiaIndia , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, necklacing has been used in communal riots, most notably in the
1984 anti-Sikh riotsThe 1984 Anti-Sikh pogroms / riots or the 1984 Sikh Massacre was a sikh genocide there was four days of violence in northern India, particularly Delhi, during which armed mobs killed Sikhs, looted and set fire to Sikh homes, businesses and schools, and attacked gurdwaras, in response to the...
which followed the assassination of
Indira GandhiIndira Priyadarshini Gandhara was an Indian politician who served as the third Prime Minister of India for three consecutive terms and a fourth term . She was assassinated by Sikh extremists...
.
The practice is widely used by drug-dealers in
BrazilBrazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
, where it's called
microondas (an allusion to the
microwave ovenA microwave oven is a kitchen appliance that heats food by dielectric heating, using microwave radiation to heat polarized molecules within the food...
).
Necklacing was also widely used in the armed insurrection led by the
Janatha Vimukthi PeramunaThe Janathā Vimukthi Peramuṇa is a Marxist-Leninist, Communist political party in Sri Lanka. The party was involved in two armed uprisings against the ruling governments in 1971 and 1987-89...
in
Sri LankaSri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a country off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent. Known until 1972 as Ceylon , Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and lies in the vicinity of India and the...
. A graphic description of one such necklacing appears in the book
The Island of Blood by journalist Anita Pratap.
In popular culture
The character Armadillo Quintero from the TV series
The ShieldThe Shield is an American television drama series starring Michael Chiklis which premiered on March 12, 2002 on FX in the United States and concluded on November 25, 2008 after seven seasons...
uses necklacing to kill his opposition gang members while consolidating his drug trade in the fictional Farmington district of
Los AngelesLos Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
.
In an episode of the Canadian series
Blue Murder, two of the detectives had to investigate two cases of necklacing related to
diamondIn mineralogy, diamond is an allotrope of carbon, where the carbon atoms are arranged in a variation of the face-centered cubic crystal structure called a diamond lattice. Diamond is less stable than graphite, but the conversion rate from diamond to graphite is negligible at ambient conditions...
and drug smuggling.
In an episode of the Canadian/South African sci-fi series
Charlie JadeCharlie Jade is a science fiction television program filmed mainly in Cape Town, South Africa. It stars Jeffrey Pierce in the title role, as a detective from a parallel universe who finds himself trapped in our universe. This is a Canadian and South African co-production filmed in conjunction with...
, executives from Vexcor threaten Charlie's friend Karl with necklacing if he does not give them information. Incidentally, this scene takes place in
Cape TownCape Town is the second-most populous city in South Africa, and the provincial capital and primate city of the Western Cape. As the seat of the National Parliament, it is also the legislative capital of the country. It forms part of the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality...
.
In the opening scene of the film
Bopha an African is necklaced by a mob of other Africans, although the scene is supposed to occur in 1980; it therefore predates the year when actual necklacings began, which was 1985.
In the film
Elite Squad, a member of an NGO is executed in this way in a
Rio de JaneiroRio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...
favelaA favela is the generally used term for a shanty town in Brazil. In the late 18th century, the first settlements were called bairros africanos . This was the place where former slaves with no land ownership and no options for work lived. Over the years, many freed black slaves moved in...
(slum). In the film
Tears of the SunTears of the Sun is a 2003 American war film, depicting a United States Navy SEAL team rescue mission amidst a civil war in the West African country of Nigeria. Lt. A.K. Waters commands the team sent to rescue U.S. citizen Dr. Lena Fiore Kendricks from the civil war en route to her jungle hospital...
, Bruce Willis's sniper shoots a man who is in the process of necklacing a man in the name of ethnic cleansing. He is referred to as "the Zippo man" because of the "Zippo" lighter he was brandishing.
In the 2008
BritishThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
horror filmHorror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...
Eden LakeEden Lake is a 2008 British horror film, written and directed by James Watkins and starring Kelly Reilly, Michael Fassbender and Jack O'Connell.-Plot synopsis:...
a pre-teen wannabe gang member is necklaced as a severe punishment. In 2009, BBC crime drama Silent Witness incorporated the practice of necklacing into a storyline surrounding a prostitution ring in South Africa.
The American band
The Mars VoltaThe Mars Volta is a Grammy award winning American progressive rock band from El Paso, Texas. Founded in 2001 by guitarist Omar Rodríguez-López and vocalist Cedric Bixler-Zavala, the band incorporates various influences including progressive rock, krautrock, jazz fusion, Latin American music, and...
reference the practice in their song "Teflon." In the 2010 video game Fallout New Vegas, necklacing is used by one faction after it raids a town.