4 Bizarre (And Extreme) Forms Of Protest
Self-crucifixion and sheep-burning are unorthodox, but they sure are attention-grabbing.
There are many good reasons to join a protest, but there are fewer ways of actually protesting in a way that gets you noticed. Assuming you don’t want to seriously hurt either yourself or those around you (and we hope that’s something we can assume, otherwise we need to have a serious talk), here are some creative (and often shocking) ways people have tried to make their point.
Self-Crucifixion
Photo: AFP/ Getty Images | Licensed to Alpha Media Group 2013
Eight bus drivers in Luque, Paraguay, have protested their firing by the Vanguardia bus company by having themselves crucified right across the street from Vanguarida’s HQ. They took the drastic measure on August 15th of this year after regular protests failed, opting to lie down and have nails hammered through their hands – between the middle and index fingers – and into the wood of the cross. As if this action wasn’t drastic enough, they’re combining it with a hunger strike, which is admirably hardcore, although probably sensible considering that their current position makes eating difficult at best. As of the time of writing of the above CNN story on August 31st, the protestors had been crucified for 17 days, and remained committed to seeing it through “to the end.” As a show of solidarity, one of the driver’s wives quickly joined them in being crucified, which, if nothing else, makes them a shoe-in for the “Badass Couple Of The Year” award.
Sheep-Burning
Photo: Flickr.com/ Ambersky235
No one ever accused the French of subtlety, but their actions in September of 1990 reached new heights of, well, French-ness. In protest against their government’s refusal to hand out $1 billion in emergency aid, farmers in France began attacking trucks importing livestock from Britain, taking their wrath out on the unfortunate sheep therein. After a vicious spate of attacks in which 94 sheep were poisoned and several others had their throats slit, the farmers raised themselves to a new level of notoriety by setting fire to several trucks full of live sheep, killing 219 of them. While this is terrible, it could have been worse – they could have adopted PETA’s standard method and taken all their clothes off, and really, the world just isn’t ready for 12,000 angry, naked Frenchmen.
Self-Burying
http://www.dailymotion.com/embed/video/xr76w6
It’s a question anyone who’s gone through the process of looking for a new home at the last minute has asked at some point: “What am I supposed to do? Live in a hole in the ground?” For these 16 residents of Aguachica, Colombia, it wasn’t a rhetorical question, as they protested their eviction in May 2012 by burying themselves up to their necks. Nearly 300 families were kicked off the privately owned land on which they had apparently formed an urban squatters settlement. Several of the protestors were treated for dehydration, which is probably not something that happened with the final entry on this list…
Water-Endurance
Photo: AFP/ Getty Images | Licensed to Alpha Media Group 2013
51 villagers from Khandwa, India, protested the building of a dam that was flooding their farmland by standing in neck-deep water. Showing far more stamina than their Colombian counterparts, they remained in the water for over 17 days, suffering rashes, peeling skin, tissue swelling, and presumably, shrinkage, as a result. The good news for them is, they scored a “partial victory,” forcing the government to lower the water level in the dam by two meters. Hooray for partial happy endings!
Read This Next
