Apart From Stella Nyanzi Stripping, Here Are Other Bizarre Things People Have Done In The Name Of Activism. Number 2 Will Leave You Shell-Shocked (Warning: GRAPHIC IMAGES)

This morning, Social media came to a standstill after revered Makerere lecturer, DR Stella Nyanzi, stripped into her birthday suit to protest her office being taken away.

As strange as her stripping is, Dr Nyanzi’s ways are not as strange as some of the methods people all-over the world have used to protest injustices.

Here are some strange ways people in the world have protested injustices:

1.FEMEN’s topless protests

FEMEN is an international group of female activists who choose their breasts as their weapons when it comes to protesting various injustices. The FEMEN female activists have been known to protest abortion, Female genital mutilation (FGM), forced marriage, prostitution and the wearing of the hijab.

 

Photo:Courtesy

They have been described by some as violent and extreme, but this wing of feminism continues to thrive and branch out from its Ukrainian roots into other countries.

2.Self-Immolation:

An extreme way of protesting where people set themselves on fire to show disapproval of oppressive governments and tyrannical policies. According to famous Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh “to burn oneself by fire is to prove that what one is saying is of the utmost importance”

 

Photo:scrapetv.com

And to show how serious people are about issues, they make the ultimate sacrifice,they set themselves on fire. These scenes have been witnessed among Buddhist monks in Vietnam and some parts of Tibet to protest the  dictatorial Chinese occupation of Tibet.

The most famous case of self-immolation to date has got to be of Tunisian Mohamed Bouazizi a vegetable vendor whose self-immolation act ignited the Arab Spring.

3.Crucifixion:

In 2013, 8 bus drivers from Paraguay who were fired from their jobs decided to nail themselves to wooden crosses after their previous protests were met with silence. And they were willing to take their protests to the very end and even had coffins to show how serious they were.

 

Photo:cnn.com

The drivers were crucified for more than 17 days and some of them even went on a hunger strike, living on water only until their issues were addressed.

4.Freebleeding

Granted, free-bleeding is not as dramatic and painful as self- immolation but nothing sends a message like menstrual blood running down your thighs in public.

Two English women took a stand against the United Kingdom’s “tampon tax” by forgoing their pads , tampons and menstrual cups and chose to ‘bleed it out’ in front of parliament.

 

 

5:Cutting off body parts and nailing scrotum to a pavement

Pyotr Pavlensky, a Russian performance artiste and protester has subjected his body to a lot of pain as a way of protesting the current political environment in Russia.

 

Photo:Reuters

Pyotr has wrapped his naked self in barbed wire, sewn his lips together to protest against the arrest of Russian feminist punk band P*ssy Riot, nailed his scrotum to the floor of Moscow’s Red Square and even cut off his ear lobe!

It’s no wonder he has been named the “living pain” artist, his acts are gruesome but very artistic and memorable!