(PMOI / MEK Iran): How can the regime not see that the solution is not to protect the wealth of rich people, but the lives of society’s most vulnerable? Maybe they do know deep down that that is the purpose of government or maybe they’re so morally bankrupt that they don’t get it. Whatever the case, it is clear that the mullahs will never change.

Any suicide is a tragedy, but the saddest of all are child suicides. Unfortunately, increasing poverty in Iran has led to a child suicide rate increase which appears to be spiraling out of control.

The National Council of Resistance of Iran’s (NCRI), and the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI / MEK Iran) reports that the majority of children and adolescents who take their own life are from disadvantaged and poor backgrounds. State-run media has been forced to address the issue because of the widespread scale of it, even if it puts the governing regime in a bad light.

Children who take their own lives feel that the future is too bleak. They see the wastage of the lives of their parents and the blight that poverty creates and can see no hope of improvement in the near future for themselves. A few examples are given below:

• MEK supporter from the city of Bushehr reports that: 2 children committed suicide because of the shame caused by not being able to afford smartphones needed to take part in online ‘Shad’ lessons as well as the poverty of their families. Despite education officials in Bushehr trying to deny the reason for the suicide, one of the children’s mother said: “the school principal had said several times that he wanted to give a phone to three students, but that did not happen. There were no phones and the only reason for my son’s grief that caused this disaster was not having a phone.”

• MEK supporter from the city of Nishapur reports that: three youths committed suicide, aged 15, 17, and 22. Two of these young people died.
• MEK supporter from the city of Ilam reports that: A 10-year-old child hanged himself due to the poverty of his family.
• MEK supporter from the city of Parsabad Moghan reports that: A hunting rifle was used by a 16-year-old boy to take his own life.
• MEK supporter from the city of Urmia reports that: poverty and the lack of a smartphone for online lessons have been given as reasons for the suicide of a 13-year-old girl.

The Ministry of Health and related organizations do not publish the exact numbers of suicides and the reasons for them. The ministry is particularly coy when it comes to releasing statistics of youth suicides, presumably because it is rightly embarrassed by them.

A government spokesperson,  Mustafa Eghlima, was quoted by the Bartarinha website as saying: “Statistics will not be announced unless made public. Of course, after a while, the noises fall asleep again. The government does not provide statistics, and many families do not report the cause of their child’s death as a suicide. Even for the coronavirus, accurate statistics are not provided.”

The Tasnim news agency recently gave a full and succinct description of some of the reasons for the increasing suicide rate in Iran in the following article published by them:

“The presence of wealthy people in important centers of power, where macro-social and economic decisions are made, confirms that poverty, although measured by economic indicators with a social manifestation, is a phenomenon related to policy-making and politics.

“In such a way that some of those sitting on the path of management either own large capital or use it in the influence of the owner of capital, policies, and decisions are naturally laid out in such a way that the distribution of national capital and revenues is diverted from its fair form and is directed to the pursuit of specific and limited group interests.

“And what reaches the other strata, according to their relation to the center of the capital, becomes less and less to the point that some people reach a very small share, equal to zero.”

MEK Iran (follow them on Twitter and Facebook)

and People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran – MEK IRAN – YouTube