Martyrs

"Martyrs put their lives on the line, choosing to sacrifice their lives for a cause rather than submit to an opponent and betray their principles." "Martyrdom", International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences | 2008

• 734 Journalists have been killed since 1992 for their belief in freedom of the press;
• The long march to freedom when 566 people were killed in Soweto during a peaceful protest by 10,000 school children protesting against being taught in Afrikaans.
• The Balibó Five, Garry Cunningham, Brian Peters, Malcolm Rennie, Greg Shackleton and Tony Stewart, Australian journalists killed in 1975 by Indonesian forces to prevent them from reporting on Indonesia's imminent invasion of Timor-Leste, and Roger West in Timor-Leste to investigate their disappearance.
• Suffragette Emily Wilding Davison;
• Stephen Bantu Biko, anti-apartheid activist in South Africa;
• Martin Luther King;
• Malcolm X;
• Jimmie Lee Jackson: The Death That Gave Life to Voting Rights
• Rev. James Reeb died for supporting civil rights
• Viola Gregg Liuzzo, another martyr of the Civil Rights movement, was the only white woman murdered during the movement
• Oneal Moore, the first African-American police-officer
• Harry And Harriette Moore, were deeply involved in the NAACP for which they were killed on Christmas day, 1955, by a firebomb exploding under their bedroom
• Anna Mae Pictou Aquash, raped and murdered on December 12, 1975, by a gunshot to the head, was an American Indian Movement (AIM) member from Pine Ridge, participated in the 1972 occupation of the Dept. of Interior in Washington DC, the 71-day Wounded Knee occupation in 1973, and armed confrontations with both US and Canadian authorities. She was one of over 60 AIM members murdered on Pine Ridge over 3 years by a government-backed death squad.
• Socrates
• In December 1803, twenty-two Souliot women when trapped by Ottoman Forces committed suicide to avoid capture, rape, and other humiliation, which is depicted in the painting of “The Souliot Women” by Ary Scheffer
• In April 1821, Athanasios Diakos, a hero of the Greek War of Independence, rejected the offer of becoming an officer in the Turkish army and a beautiful Turkish woman as a wife, with the famous quote: “I was born a Greek and I will die a Greek,” for which Diakos was impaled on a spit.
• Harvey Milk
• John F. Kennedy
• Robert Kennedy