Over the past two weeks, two teenage girls and a young woman have ended their life by committing suicide in the cities of Sanandaj, Saqez and Ravansar.
According to the Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN), on Wednesday evening (Oct 24, 2018), a young woman in Saqez ended her life by hanging herself in her house due to family problems. Sh Dastan was married with a child.
Earlier on Oct 20, 2018, a 16-year-old teenager from Sanandaj ended her life by throwing herself from one of the bridges of the city. She died immediately after being transferred to the hospital due to suffering from serious injuries. There is no information available on the identity and cause of her suicide.
The third suicide attempt in the past week happened on Oct 19, 2018 when another teenage girl from Gheshlagh of Rawansar also lost her life due to burns. This girl has been identified as Sh Sobhani,16 years old. While local sources have declared the cause of death of this teenage girl as self-immolation, the family has mentioned her death has been caused by accidental fire with Tyner material.
It is noteworthy that dozens of young women and women in different parts of Iran’s Kurdistan commit suicide every year. However, the rate of self-immolation among women is not clear due to lack of access to detailed statistics and failure of families to disclose the main causes of suicide. In fact, families of suicide victims tend to deny the cause of death as self-immolation and often report that burning has been caused by other accidents such as electric shock or explosion of gas cylinders. The reluctance of state institutions to publish statistics about suicide and its causes, the exact rate of suicide and the reasons that lead young people and adolescents to attempt suicide are unclear.
