Suicide due to poverty and deprivation: The last cry of protest against discrimination
The number of suicides has increased both in the working class and among children and adolescents in Iran.
The number of news reports about suicide attempts among workers and students deprived of educational facilities has increased in recent months; from the suicide of a municipality driver in front of the cameras of his workplace building in Marvdasht to the news of the suicide of an 11-year-old student in Bushehr, whose family's inability to buy a smartphone was cited as the main reason for his action.
The Tehran-based Etemad newspaper reported last week that, citing an informed source in the Iranian Ministry of Health, “the number of suicide victims in the first eight months of this year – from April 1 to the end of November – has increased by 4.2 percent compared to the same period last year.”
Part of the report states that in the first eight months of 2020, 15 people died every day from suicide attempts. Last year, this figure was an average of 14 people per day, and 3,444 people in the entire eight months. However, the total number of Iranians who decided to end their lives from the beginning of the solar year 2020 to the end of the second month of autumn, Aban, was 3,589, an increase of 4.2 percent.
There are undoubtedly many different reasons and motivations for each individual who decides to end their own life. However, in cases such as workers committing suicide in the workplace, the dimensions of this painful act are more focused on the violated rights of the workers and their protest against the way their employer handles their affairs. In a sense, the way for many workers to express their protest against their violated rights has been so closed that ending their lives, even in the same place that has been the worker's "workplace" for years, is the last sign of protest that may cost the protestor their life.
On the other hand, the increase in suicide attempts among Iranian students, sometimes due to deprivation of basic educational facilities, is another clear sign of the violation of the rights of children who find no other way to escape the suffering of livelihood and discrimination than to end their lives. Although there are no exact statistics on the number of children who commit suicide each year, a report by the Etemad newspaper and based on research by the “Defense of Children’s Rights” Association states that “more than 250 children committed suicide in Iran between 1990 and 2009.”
The reaction to difficult living conditions that manifests itself in suicide attempts is a bitter reaction to the violation of obvious human rights; sometimes it is the noose of poverty around the neck of a worker, and sometimes the noose of discrimination around the neck of a disadvantaged student.
Workers commit suicide at work; protest at the cost of life
Two weeks ago, news broke that a worker at the Marvdasht Municipality committed suicide in front of the municipality's CCTV cameras. The news reported that Bahram Ebrahimimehr, 31, a married man with a three-year-old son who had been working as a driver at the Marvdasht Municipality in Fars Province for the past eleven years, ended his life by hanging himself in front of the CCTV cameras at the Marvdasht Municipality's motor facility.
Along with this news, a text image was also published in which the Marvdasht Municipality worker, before attempting suicide, had written to his colleagues that he had been repeatedly threatened with dismissal due to his protest against the postponement of his salary by the contracting authorities in the Marvdasht Municipality.
Part of Bahram Ebrahimimehr's message to his colleagues, referring to the constant delay in salary payments, states, "We are still receiving the salaries we were receiving seven years ago. Our salary is two million eight hundred thousand tomans, even lower. How can I pay my house expenses, arrears, and debts with this salary?"
This was the latest example of suicide by workers who in previous years had always struggled with problems such as delays in the payment of salaries and benefits, and for some of them there was no choice but to end their lives to express their protest against the current situation.
In the past few years, there has been a significant number of workers who have committed suicide at their workplaces or in the labor office buildings of their cities. In June of this year, a worker at the Yadavaran oil field in Hoveyzeh County hanged himself due to financial problems and lack of monthly salaries. The worker had hanged himself next to one of the oil wells in the oil field.
In November of this year, a worker set himself on fire on a street in Kermanshah, in front of the Workers' Insurance Association building. According to reports, the Kermanshah worker set himself on fire with gasoline to protest against not being insured. The worker died a day after being hospitalized due to severe burns.
In July 2019, a municipal worker in Abadan, Khuzestan Province, attempted suicide by throwing himself out of the window of the city's municipal building in protest of non-payment of his insurance premiums, but was stopped by the presence of law enforcement.
In the same month, a construction worker in the Niavaran neighborhood of Tehran attempted suicide at his workplace due to a dispute with the contractor and a long delay in paying his salary, but survived thanks to the efforts of firefighters.
In June 2019, a worker at the Tondgoyan Petrochemical Company attempted suicide in protest of being suspended from work. According to reports, the worker entered his former workplace and went to the company premises, attempted to hang himself, but after being informed, people in the premises rescued him and he was transferred to the Petrochemical Industries Hospital.
A former Ahvaz Steel worker told the Human Rights Campaign about the reasons for the increase in suicides among workers: "Many workers have been unemployed in recent years. In the current situation in Iran, when a worker is fired, it becomes impossible to even make ends meet for the next week. Workers have neither savings nor benefits that would allow them to survive for a month or two, so to speak, until they can find another job. For many others, the delay in paying their salaries has become so unbearable that it is no different from a worker who has been unemployed, only they are forced to work so that their wages are not taken away from them."
This labor activist pointed out that many workers are not optimistic about the outcome of the protests and rallies, and at the same time, they do not want to be pressured by the police and security forces, and said, "For them, when they cannot provide for their children's simplest needs and see that there is no future waiting for them, there is no other option but suicide."
According to this former worker at the Ahvaz Steel Factory, "the pressures of living and widespread poverty among workers have not only led to an increase in the number of suicides, but have also had a great impact on violent behavior in these areas, even leading to cases such as murder or violent fights."
Perhaps one of the most newsworthy suicides among workers occurred in the last month of 2017, when Ali Naqdi, a worker at the Haft Tappeh Agricultural and Industrial Company, threw himself into the “water canal” of the industrial complex due to poverty resulting from unpaid wages. The report on Ali Naqdi’s suicide in Haft Tappeh stated that he had entered the work area hours before committing suicide and told his colleagues that he had been pursuing his demands in vain, saying, “I am tired of this situation and want to commit suicide so that the company officials will think about the demands his colleagues have been making for many years.”
One of Ali Naqdi's colleagues, noting that Mr. Naqdi had about 27 years of experience working at the Haft Tappeh sugarcane complex, told ILNA news agency, "We didn't believe Mr. Naqdi would keep his words, but suddenly we came across his body lying in the water in the agricultural canal. Ali was about 50 years old. For years, factory officials have not deposited our retirement expenses into the social security account, despite the government's approval, and we seasonal workers have been left in limbo."
At that time (May 2018), a labor activist and member of the Haft Tappeh Workers' Union told the Hamdali newspaper: "Although there are no accurate statistics on worker suicides, I have personally witnessed several cases of suicide or attempted suicide."
Referring to the extreme poverty and hardship among the workers of this large complex, this member of the Haft Tappeh labor union said, "In one case of suicide, one of the workers, along with his daughter and son, aged about ten and twelve, set himself and his children on fire in front of the management building. He wanted to set himself and his children on fire with gasoline in front of the management building, but fortunately the workers were able to prevent him from doing so."
Apart from cases in which workers have attempted suicide at work or in front of the company or office building, many other cases of suicide by fired workers or those under financial pressure due to delayed salary payments have also been reported, in which workers chose a place other than the factory to end their lives.
On Saturday, December 12 of this year, the Telegram channel of the Haft Tappeh Company Workers' Syndicate announced that Reza Al-Kashir, a dismissed worker in the company's greenhouse section, hanged himself in his father's house due to livelihood pressures and economic problems and unfortunately died.
The Emtaed news channel quoted a labor activist as saying: "Al-Katheer had repeatedly stated that he had disabled brothers and sisters and was the breadwinner of the family. However, he had been working at the company for the past month when, by a sudden decision of the factory authorities, he was fired and replaced by another person, and his frequent trips to return to work were unsuccessful.
In the absence of accurate statistics and at the same time the silence of many workers' suicide attempts in many regions of Iran, it is difficult to obtain an accurate number of suicides among workers due to livelihood and poverty reasons. However, the number of worker suicides has been prominent in almost all years of the last decade of the 13th century. Cases that occurred both in government institutions such as municipalities and in factories belonging to the private sector.
Concerns about the prevalence of suicide among Iranian children and adolescents
It had not been a few months since the widespread outbreak of the coronavirus in Iran when the bitter news of the suicide of Mohammad Musizadeh, an 11-year-old student from Bushehri, shocked many because he did not have a smartphone or tablet and was deprived of continuing his distance learning during the coronavirus pandemic.
The mother of this Bushehri student said, "My child only had one phone that I bought for him, and he used it to do his schoolwork until it broke and he asked me to buy him a new phone. I promised to buy it for him as soon as possible."
It was then that news broke about the suicide of a 13-year-old girl in Urmia, who also committed suicide due to lack of access to the necessary equipment for distance learning. However, the city's education authorities denied the reason for the 13-year-old girl's suicide.
But in October 2020, the strange news of the suicide of five teenage girls in the city of Ramhormoz was published. Shortly after this news was published, in November 2020, the news of the suicide of another 15-year-old girl in Ramhormoz, Khuzestan, who had hanged herself, increased concerns about the prevalence of suicide in the city.
At that time, the head of education in Ramhormoz had cited family disputes, blind prejudices, intellectual and emotional abuse, and failure to respond to biological needs and requirements as the causes of this bitter incident, and had explicitly stated that the reason for the suicide of one of the female students was the family's opposition to providing her with a cell phone and the lack of opportunity for the teenager to continue her education.
Ramhormoz County, with a population of about 100,000, is located 100 kilometers east of Ahvaz, the capital of Khuzestan Province.
Previously, Mohammad Mehdi Tondgoyan, Deputy Minister of Youth Affairs at the Ministry of Sports and Youth, had announced a decrease in the "age of suicide" and an increase in its number at a "growing rate."
On October 13, extremists told Borna News Agency that most suicides occur between the ages of 15 and 35, but this year we have also witnessed suicides by "children under 15."
This government official had announced that the share of Iranian teenagers in annual suicides was more than 7%.
Although some cases of suicide among children and adolescents, especially during the coronavirus pandemic, are directly related to discrimination in children's access to educational materials, the suicide crisis among Iranian children and adolescents also has other reasons, as many of these suicide cases, especially among girls, are closely linked to forced marriage or unwanted dropout from school.
An educational expert and former principal of girls' schools in North Khorasan, referring to the structural discrimination against girls in society and some families, told the Human Rights Campaign in Iran, "This discrimination is even evident in the announcement of the reasons for the suicide of some girls in the families. For example, some families refuse to announce the suicide of their daughter in order to protect their reputation, and we often hear this news from other sources."
Referring to the increase in the number of suicides among teenage students during the COVID-19 pandemic, the education expert told the Human Rights Campaign: “There is undoubtedly a direct relationship between being forced to drop out of school and deciding to commit suicide among teenagers. For many girls in deprived areas, the educational environment is the only place where they can experience a sense of usefulness and also hope for the future. The deprivation of these things from a 14-15 year old girl who knows she has no authority to determine her future destiny can lead to her complete collapse.”
On January 10 of this year, the human rights organization "Hengeo" announced in a report that at least 225 people had committed suicide in Kurdish cities in Iran between January 2019 and January 2020, 20 percent of whom were children and adolescents.
These 225 people lived in the four provinces of Ilam, Kurdistan, Kermanshah, and West Azerbaijan, 103 of whom were women and 122 were men who decided to end their lives.
The Hengaw report says that 45 of these people were teenagers under the age of 18; 26 girls and 19 boys, 21 of whom were under the age of 15.
The increase in suicide rates in deprived areas and cities with poor public facilities shows that many suicide cases are directly related to deprivation and poverty.
Fatemeh Eslami, head of the Yara Consulting and Voice Unit of the "Protection of Children's Rights" Association, had previously said in an interview with Etemad Online: "What differs between different countries regarding effective interventions in suicide prevention is related to the performance of countries in managing the macro-factors affecting suicide simultaneously with managing individual factors. Equal access to resources and reducing inequalities are among the programs that are effective in reducing suicide rates."
Although in recent years, and with the increasing use of mass media, news about teenage suicides in Iran has become more widespread and has drawn the attention of country officials to this social crisis, it seems that the majority of officials' reactions are only to confirm or deny the news of suicide and its reasons, and there is no determination to provide the means to prevent suicide among children and adolescents.
In these circumstances, many experts in the field of children's rights in Iran are concerned that suicide among Iranian children and adolescents will become more widespread, and that the inattention of the authorities and the media's silence about this crisis will increase its severity.
Source: Human Rights Campaign
