Suicide in Iraq .. Increased cases and government procedures "patch"

Walid al-Musalh - Baghdad

Many are the laws and regulations that are issued from time to time claiming the preservation of a dignified life and the protection of rights violated, it is the responsibility of the legislator before it is truly the rights of the individual.

However, what is strange and surprising is that such legislation has limited the act somewhere and left it to exercise freely elsewhere.

The Baghdad Provincial Council's proposal may erect two-meter barriers on the capital's bridges to prevent increased suicides, a living example of the chaos of legislation in the country where Hammurabi was the first legislator (rule 1792-1750 BC).

Council member Mushtaq al-Shammari denied the existence of such a decision, and pointed out that the Ministry of Interior is the idea, and addressed the President of the Council Riyad al-Adadh on the possibility of the construction of fences on the sides of the bridges to reduce the phenomenon, and described the proposed tender good.

Al-Shammari confirmed to al-Jazeera Net that the council rejected patchwork solutions and opened a new door of corruption.

Angry people
A wave of anger and displeasure ignited social networking sites, and sparked a whirlwind of reactions in various circles after the announcement of the news.

A member of the Communist Party Jassim al-Hilfi said in his Twitter account, sarcastically: "After long thought, officials proposed a high fence on Baghdad bridges to reduce suicides. Which produced despair, frustration and hopelessness. "

For his part, member of the Development Center of the European Union Mohammed Al-Wadi - through the micro-blogging site - not surprised by the decision, saying, "No one is shocked because the mere presence of these official addresses is a great insult to the Iraqis with this proposal or without it."

Activists believe that the cement blocks, which perched on the chests of Iraqis and lost their beautiful capital after a period of American invasion, are replaced by another type of retribution that is used to suppress and harm the citizen.

Statistics are absent
The Independent High Commission for Human Rights (HCHR), which monitored nearly 3,000 suicide cases between 2015 and 2017, acknowledged that there were no real suicide statistics, because the existing figures represent the actual cases that end in death, without going into the number of unsuccessful attempts or cases that do not occur. Disclosure for community reasons.

And the age groups that resort to suicide, between the member of the Commission Fadel Ghrawi that the phenomenon included different groups and ages, but concentrated more among the young, many of whom suffer from unemployment and the inability to marry and the formation of a family, as well as the prevalence of the culture of violence and widening the space of social communication and abuse.

Al-Gharawi revealed to Al-Jazeera Net that the province of Dhi Qar (southern Iraq) came first in the number of suicide bombers, which reached 59 cases in 2018.

International study
According to a US study conducted by the Gallup Center for International Studies on suicidal proportions and causes, Iraq was eliminated fourth globally in 2018 after Chad, Niger and Sierra Leone.

The study confirmed that the exacerbation of negative emotions such as grief, fear, anxiety and depression, are motivated by youth to lose their lives and the tendency to get rid of them.

The government is responsible
Suicide methods vary and vary between hanging, burning, using a firearm, taking toxic substances, or throwing a breath out of a bridge.

After the phenomenon is exacerbated, the director of the Iraqi Observatory for Human Rights, Mustafa Saadoun, sees the need for the government to take the initiative and address a situation that has escalated in society. He told Al-Jazeera Net that "the number of suicide bombers in 2003 was 15 people, but rose to 1,532 cases in 2013."

The horrific rise in the number of suicides casts the government with the responsibility to redress the matter and provide jobs, and civil society must take its role in raising awareness, educating and raising moral and religious concerns.

Abu Samer, a passerby on the Martyrs Bridge in central Baghdad, believes that the family disintegration and the spread of drugs and the absence of the role of the educational institution, reasons lost life glamor and made them throw themselves from the bridges as if they are going to Paradise lost.

Until recently, suicide was a cliche that the ear did not like to hear, but it quickly swung around and became a subject that people circulated without hesitation, citing numbers that grew louder in every novel.