Death By Burning - Modern Burnings

Modern Burnings

No modern state conducts executions by burning, apart from a mass execution in North Korea in the late 1990s. Like all capital punishment, it is forbidden to members of the Council of Europe by the European Convention on Human Rights. It was never routinely practiced in the United States and in any case the Supreme Court while ruling on Firing Squads in Wilkerson v. Utah from 1879 incidentally determined that it was cruel and unusual punishment.

However, modern-day burnings still occur. In South Africa for example, extrajudicial execution by burning was done via a method called necklacing where rubber tires filled with kerosene (or gasoline) are placed around the neck of a live individual. The fuel is then ignited, the rubber melts, and the victim is burnt to death. In Rio de Janeiro, burning people standing inside a pile of tires is a common form of murder used by drug dealers to punish those who have supposedly collaborated with the police. This form of burning is called microondas, “the microwave”. The movie Tropa de Elite (Elite Squad) and video game Max Payne 3 have scenes depicting this practice.

A former Soviet Main Intelligence Directorate officer writing under the alias Victor Suvorov, described in his book Aquarium a Soviet traitor being burnt alive in a crematorium. There has been some speculation that the identity of this officer was Oleg Penkovsky, however during his radio interview to Russian station Echo of Moscow Vladimir Rezun (alias Victor Suvorov) denied this, saying "I never mentioned it was Penkovsky" No executed GRU traitors (Penkovsky aside) are known matching scant Suvorov's description given in "Aquarium"

During the 1980 New Mexico State Penitentiary riot, a number of inmates were burnt to death by fellow inmates, who used blow torches.

One of the most notorious extrajudicial burnings of modern times occurred in Waco, Texas in the USA on 15 May 1916. Jesse Washington, a mentally challenged African American farmhand, after having been convicted of the murder of a white woman, was taken by a mob to a bonfire, castrated, doused in coal oil, and hanged by the neck from a chain over the bonfire, slowly burning to death. A postcard from the event still exists, showing a crowd standing next to Washington’s charred corpse with the words on the back “This is the barbecue we had last night. My picture is to the left with a cross over it. Your son, Joe”. This event attracted international condemnation, and is remembered as the Waco Horror.

In the late 1990s, a number of North Korean army generals were executed by being burnt alive inside the Rungrado May Day Stadium in Pyongyang, North Korea.

In Sulaymaniyah, Iraq, there were 400 cases of the burning of women in 2006. In Iraqi Kurdistan, at least 255 women had been killed in just the first six months of 2007, three-quarters of them by burning.

It was reported on 21 May 2008, that in Kenya a mob had burnt to death at least 11 people accused of witchcraft.

On 19 June 2008, the Taliban in Sadda, Lower Kurram, Pakistan burnt alive three truck drivers of the Turi tribe after attacking a convoy of trucks en route from Kohat to Parachinar.