The sharp focus has recently been turned on Iran, once again, because of many bitter events. One such event is the high number of child suicides. As recent as August 7, news about two new suicides spread across the country.
9-year-old Amir Mohammad Abulofai and 12-year-old Farhad Khodayi, from Kohdasht city, Lorestan province, both committed suicide and put an end to their lives. Abulofai hanged himself, while Khodayi ended his life by using a gun.
According to analysis over the past decade, a total of around 250 children have committed suicide in Iran. It should be noted that this is just the number of the victims published by the Iranian regime’s media, so there is no exact number of the suicides of children in Iran, but it is likely to be higher than publicized.
The statistics of the regime’s National Organization for Civil Registration have stated that the fifth most common reason for the deaths of youths in Iran is a suicide, equating to 3.89 percent of the deaths. According to their investigation, 48 percent of the suicides that have become public were committed by boys, and 52 percent by girls. The higher number of suicides among girls is likely due to the regime’s misogyny and inequality against females, and double pressure and repression on the women in the country.
Of the statistics presented, around 45 percent of suicides were related to children between the ages of 9 and 14 years, with another 55 percent relating to the age range of 15 to 18 years.
Among the causes of these suicides: eight percent were attributed to poverty; 26 percent because of educational problems; 28 percent due to conflicts with family; five percent related to emotional relationships; eight percent as a result of rape; five percent were caused under the influence of movies and videos; and, a further 20 percent of suicides were due to forced marriages.
The cities of Tehran, Isfahan, and Hamadan had the highest number of suicides. The high number of suicides among the youths has serious consequences for society across Iran. Primarily, this will make suicide an ordinary behavior and habituation as the last solution for getting rid of the problems these children are facing.
The rate of despair among the country’s youths is high. The regime is not generating enough job opportunities needed to prevent the desperation and destruction of the country’s future, so the number of unemployed youths is increasing year after year.
According to the 2019 report of the Strategic Information and Statistics Center of the regime’s Ministry of Cooperation, Labor and Social Welfare, out of 10.5 million youths aged 15 to 24, 8.1 million of them were neither studying nor engaged in skill training nor employed.
While this is more than enough to push the youths to suicide, the regime has further intensified its repression and the executions of youths over the past few months. This has been executed by stricter laws of hijab against women, including teenage girls, and the spread of narcotics among the youths, especially the younger male population. The majority of the regime’s recent executions were, in fact, related to narcotics cases.
It should be noted that Iranian youths are among the most politically active in the 57 nations of the Islamic world. As the most disobedient segment of the society, they are representing a long-term threat to the regime’s theocracy.
Another question that should be responded to is where the youths and elites of Iran are going. Part of this question can be responded to by observing the participation of the youths in the entry exam of the universities, as reported by the state-run Fararu daily on July 25.
They wrote, “In this year’s exam, there is a 44% decrease in the number of candidates in the math group compared to the national exam in 2012. In addition, in 2019, 24.3% of all candidates entered the math group, but in this year’s exam, this number has decreased to 9.7%.”
Fararu added, “While the number of candidates in the foreign language group in the entrance exam of 2022 has increased by 1383.8 percent compared to 2012. It seems that part of the 1383% increase in the number of candidates in the foreign language group in this year’s national exam is elites who are taking the last steps to move to world-class universities.”
