Eleven-Year-Old Boy Commits Suicide in Izeh City, Khuzestan Province Due to Hunger
Iranian media outlets have reported that an eleven-year-old boy in Izeh city, located in Khuzestan province in southern Iran, committed suicide due to “hunger” and died after two days in a coma.
The website “Rokna,” which publishes news on incidents, published this story for the first time. According to this website, quoting the boy’s mother: “This family’s food for one week was only plain bread, and after that bread ran out, the boy committed suicide.”
Rokna deleted details related to this news after several hours and announced that the cause of the teenager’s suicide has not yet been determined. According to the website, the report linking the suicide to hunger and poverty is the work of “hostile media,” and citing “someone close to this family,” it wrote that hunger or poverty played no role in the teenager’s suicide.
Economic pressure in Iran has increased in recent years. Financial corruption by officials has prevented equal distribution of wealth in society.
US officials, including Mike Pompeo, have repeatedly warned in recent months that the Islamic Republic uses its country’s resources to support terrorist groups in the region instead of using them for its own people.
Previously, the head of emergency medical services in Khuzestan told the ILNA news agency that suicides in the province have increased over the past few months, to the point that “at least five to six suicides occur weekly in the province.”
Last month, Mourad Shamouli, the prosecutor of Izeh, also stated that the city “ranks first in terms of suicides in the province and third in the country.”
During the summer of this year, at a conference held to examine the causes of high suicide rates in Izeh, Mohammad Sadegh Karimi Kia, deputy director of social affairs at the Khuzestan governorate’s general directorate, said “cultural problems, unemployment, economic and social issues” are reasons for the high suicide rate in the city.
None of Iran’s government officials have yet responded to this news.
During the summer of this year, news was also published that a twelve-year-old boy in Abadan committed suicide after his mother sold his mobile phone and bicycle to pay the house rent.
Source: Voice of America
