Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
also self immolation, 1817, from self- + immolation.
Wiktionary
n. The act of setting oneself on fire, especially as a form of protest.
Wikipedia
Self-immolation is an act of killing oneself as a sacrifice. While usage since the 1960s has typically referred only to setting oneself on fire, the term historically refers to a much wider range of suicidal options, such as leaping off a cliff, starvation, or seppuku (also called hara-kiri; ritual disemboweling). Self-immolation is often used as a form of protest or for the purposes of martyrdom. It has centuries-long traditions in some cultures, while in modern times it has become a type of radical political protest. Michael Biggs compiled a list of 533 "self-immolations" reported by Western media from the 1950s to 2002, using the general definition (not just by fire), and including any intentional suicide "on behalf of a collective cause".
Usage examples of "self-immolation".
Just as the parasites around me were proclaiming their helpless dependence on my mind and were expecting me voluntarily to accept a slavery they had no power to enforce, just as they were counting on my self-immolation to provide them with the means of their plan—so throughout the world and throughout men's history, in every version and form, from the extortions of loafing relatives to the atrocities of collectivized countries, it is the good, the able, the men of reason, who act as their own destroyers, who transfuse to evil the blood of their virtue and let evil transmit to them the poison of destruction, thus gaining for evil the power of survival, and for their own values—the impotence of death.
Just as the parasites around me were proclaiming their helpless dependence on my mind and were expecting me voluntarily to accept a slavery they had no power to enforce, just as they were counting on my self-immolation to provide them with the means of their plan—so throughout the world and throughout men’s history, in every version and form, from the extortions of loafing relatives to the atrocities of collectivized countries, it is the good, the able, the men of reason, who act as their own destroyers, who transfuse to evil the blood of their virtue and let evil transmit to them the poison of destruction, thus gaining for evil the power of survival, and for their own values—the impotence of death.
A desperate dogfight had swirled across the red giant's sky, and the damaged battle cruiser Kalinin, her crew evacuated, had been left behind to an attention-distracting self-immolation.
Is the moral purpose of those who are good, self-immolation for the sake of those who are evil?
One of the frenzied aspirations of the populace was for imitations of the questionable public virtues of antiquity, and for sacrifices and self-immolations on the people's altar.