The Felling of Seedlings in the Region of Thousand-Year-Old Oaks

The high chassis vehicles of candidates for Parliament swerve on the bumpy roads of the underdeveloped region of Kohgiluyeh; instead of heading for a campaign stop, they are going to the funeral rites for children who have committed suicide.  These suicides are the focus of hundreds and even thousands of comments written by individual citizens and civil activists in this region responding to election posts.  These posts and comments eventually found their way into official and non-virtual spaces.  In several instances young, active critics also brought these suicides and the complex conditions surrounding them to the attention of the candidates. While the campaigning was going on for the 12th round of the National Assembly, a group of people took their own lives.  The candidates, following the venerable mourning rites— meaning the gaudy funeral processions and condolence offerings—went from this village to that and this town to that. This year the assembly elections coincided with the decision of children living in the Zagros mountains to end their lives, setting off alarm bells. The nearly 20 reported suicides in the space of one month was so, in itself, indicative of the crisis or breakdown of society that even the Health Organization and several other institutions considered sending experts to these regions or forming special committees to study them.  Some statistics show that the level of suicides reached a reported 20 out of 100,000 in the short space of one month.  To grasp the imponderable nature of this figure it is enough to note that on average the number of suicides is about ten and, in many developed countries, it is as low as five.

What is happening in the Zagros region of Iran to cause so many young people in the prime of life to give up on living as if infected by an epidemic that spreads from family to family, village to village?  Genetic factors, indigenous culture, economic conditions, the weakening of emotional bonds, and the breakdown of society…Which of these is implicated and how can one find a way to forestall this devastating downhill slide of the passively reactive negation of life? Although previous studies of three very gaudy burial rites show them to be a factor in the increase of youth suicide in regions where Bakhtiaris reside, and people have warned about this, why are these carnivals of election candidates participating in the rites so majestically and showily?...

Economic pressure, social despair and tens of other factors have resulted in an increase in suicides among children in the regions of the Zagros in Iran.

What are living conditions in Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad, Islam, Chaharmahal, and Bakhtiari, Lorestan, and several similar regions really like, and how far off are the figures for suicide from the national average?  If the official, reliable statistics on the complex conditions are so alarming, then why isn’t something done and basically, what can be done? The present report is an attempt to answer these questions, but with this necessary caveat: in several instances this article has been reviewed by social workers and experts in this field and many of the explanations and details that could cause harm have been left out of the article.

“I’m fed up with life”: The Story of a Fearless Praise of a Death

“Y” is an eleven-year-old girl who committed suicide in late January of his year and left a note, the childish suicide note of an eleven-year-old girl, written in the Lori dialect.  In the note she tells her younger sister of her anxieties and entrusts her to the care of her uncle’s wife.  She also gives her clothing and mobile phone “by way of remembrance” to specific individuals and finally, after writing “I’m fed up with life,” exchanges a not so long life for an eternal slumber.  She was living in Yasuj.  Her father suffered a spinal cord injury years before as the result of an electrocution, and her parents were divorced. Y and her little sister lived with her grandfather’s family and during her last moments she worried about her sister with the tone of a loving mother.  She wrote her aunt, “I’m entrusting my sister to you, goodbye…” This ellipsis, in the truest sense of the word, speaks volumes left unsaid, because the child was immediately sent to the hospital.  But the regret about visiting the doctor and tears for committing other childish acts didn’t provide a way out and a lonely young girl didn’t get to see the most important ending of her most important children’s game.  Her close relatives offer various versions of the story to reporters of Etemad, but many contain details not germane to a society with a rising tide of economic and psychological wretchedness. A significant portion of these stories, however, are accounts of days full of pain, an expression constantly gloomy, and the increasingly fragile state of the child, who, with her tiny and frail shoulders, bore the burden of life after her parents’ divorce; she was just sick and tired with her mother away and forced to attend to the daily needs of her wheelchair-bound father. More important than all of these things, however, is the absence of a single factor cause for suicide, especially in the case of children with their undeveloped decision making on the one hand and their abandonment to being exposed to this harm, and even the students who have survived this harm. One of the teachers in this child’s school now and nearly month since this horrifying incident says to Etemad, “The effects of the terrible event on the bodies and souls of the other students are still evident, and, despite several verbal and written requests, no expert or skilled counsellor has set foot in the school.” She says, “I still continually visualize the request made on Instagram or Telegram and each time it’s as if I’ve just heard it. My breathing stops and the rug is pulled out from under me. For weeks I haven’t been able to go to class normally and stare at her empty desk and, God knows, I’ve aged several years. I’m someone with a skilled job, and I’m a reader, but I have to see a therapist every week! Just imagine how these kids are feeling! We’ve examined them on Y’s life several times and had them write letters to her, and I’ve heard them praise her several times, saying she was very brave and wishing they could be as strong as she was!” None of the sentences out of this 32-year-old female teacher’s mouth end without long pauses, extended moments when she is on the verge of tears, and sobs caught in her throat, but she always stresses that in our reporting we write how much the presence of a psychologist and a therapist in this school is imperative. Confirmation of her remarks can simply be found by referring to social networks. On all the pages containing the photo of this child and a copy of her suicide note, the number of comments and the frequency they are shared surpass normal messaging activity. There is an uproar under way on social media, and besides emojis of broken, black hearts, there are ones with fire or girls weeping; also there is a wave of users’ condemnations most of which are directed at the mother, sometimes with acerbic comments like “Don’t be so satisfied with yourself, we’ll make humans out of you yet” and there are wishes that the child rests in peace. There is also a flood of approval for the act and, at the same time, unease on the part of parents over their own children’s circumstances. One explains, “My son is in the sixth grade and he keeps saying he’s going to kill himself. I really don’t dare go to work.” In response to this comment, another parent, seemingly a mother using a man’s image, says, “Our daughter is also sixteen. All she says is that one day she’ll kill herself. We don’t dare leave her alone. Children see these things and, instead of studying, they do the exact opposite so they can carry out their wishes.” This last month 20 instances of suicide have been reported in this province to the press and on social networks, and many more have been made public and verified by the Etemad reporter and confirmed by the families or close relatives, only the example of Y has generated an unprecedented response and become a cause célèbres not only in this province but across the nation; the publication of the news of a child’s death and its becoming the talk of the day has in many instances been accompanied with praise for such a death in comments like “Greetings to those who exact revenge for life with their own bodies!” or “Good for you! You had the nerve and how mature you were you than your age! How well you understood and perceived the unjust nature of this life and world, you beautiful girl.” These are two examples of comments praising this death. It is regrettable that this tragic death, which was accompanied by a hand-written note full of spelling errors and by the photo of an innocent, defenseless young girl who lacked the opportunity to get the necessary treatment that would enable her to go living has been greeted with heartfelt praise or, at the very least, the possibility of persuading other individuals facing similar circumstances to continue living. Among all those who commented, however, no one had the heart to encourage her to stay alive, to say nothing of warning about the effects of certain words forever etched on the screens of mobile phones of thousands, even millions of people. The news, however, was so horrifying to many that except for quoting from literature, they had nothing else to write; for example, this piece from a poet who later connected the memory of living as a child in China with living at the foothills of the Zagros Mountains, and also recorded a suspicious death that occurred at the height of middle-aged maturity—Hussein Panahi:

                        God forbid we’re somebody’s dream,

                                    Who years ago

                        Went to sleep under the oak tree.”

Setting aside all these reactions, now after examining the details of other children’s suicides in this province in the last few months and the explanations of their parents or relatives, it is possible to speak with certainty about the reasons behind the many searches for it. One is the last childish handwritten note and the other is the face of the victim, which in the parlance of the comments,  was “beautiful but anguished.” Here is yet another that highlights the need for proper coverage of suicide and serves as a warning that sometimes publishing a picture can in itself have a noticeable effect on the publicizing a form of death.

The Fine Line between Closing One’s Eyes to Something and Being Overly Aware

Media coverage of suicide is problematic under a regime that is constantly manipulating signs and indicators, and this manipulation comes to light when it is ineffective. A clear example of this is in the reporting of the stock market index. In one decade in the past, those in charge now say officially certain individuals had been aware in advance of every upward and downward movement, a phenomenon that has led to several court cases. News of this was, as they say in common parlance, swept under the rug at the time. It is clear that sweeping the news of suicides under the rug can have terrible consequences and turn the problem into a crisis. On the other hand, however, there is a method of covering suicide that arouses the fear that more publicity could trigger even more deaths and produce what has been termed a contagion. An obvious example of this is the coverage of the movement well-known as “Woman, Life, Freedom” in 2022. Although news of those tumultuous days was reported constantly in the world’s reputable press, at the same time an Iranian man living in France ended his life to show “gain support and the world’s attention to the demonstrations in Iran,” and, as it happened, a study of many of the world’s reputable media shows that in the news of those days this particular instance was not reported nor was there a trace of it in the archives of many of the reliable western media. We wouldn’t be that far wrong were we to say that right now many of the world’s newspaper reporters and reliable media engage in the strictest form of censorship when it comes to covering news of suicides and that the standards of the World Health Organization are in lock step with that policy; there is no mention of the word “suicide” in headlines, and in the reporting of the deaths of celebrated people, the word is not mentioned. The details and methods of suicide are not expressed nor can you find the slightest praise or trace of encouragement for sensitive individuals even if you go over the reports word for word with a fine tooth comb. These standards have made the situation more complicated in a country like Iran. Now, on the one hand, virtual networks publish these stories and pictures without any guidelines, and, on the other, government authorities don’t even give reporters access to official statistics on this societal harm. The intricacies of this issue, however, cannot be summarized with just these few instances, but many experts who are knowledgeable about the complexities see strict adherence to standards of humanity more important and more effective. Amir Hossein Jalali, a psychiatrist and head of the Commission on the Prevention of Suicide of the Iranian Psychiatric Association both before and after the news of the death of the renowned film director Kiumars Pour-Ahmad became public, issued a statement that suicide should be discussed more openly. Jalali said, “The media should encourage people harboring thoughts of suicide to speak candidly about them with friends, family, and specialists. In reality, discussion of suicide should be put on the agenda, but at the same time, one must not forget that it is generally accepted that publication of news about suicide can lead to an increase in its incidence, at least among vulnerable groups. The psychiatrist cannot be expected to sit in his office and instruct. It is up to the media to inform people about this topic. If we don’t raise public consciousness about suicide, I have no doubt that we will definitely see a noticeable and significant rise in suicides. We cannot alter the underlying factors in suicide, but with coverage of it and an increase in services, we can help reduce the number suicides. In the area of suicide, we in the country’s health care system have been negligent in a way, pretending to ignore it, but we’ve got to treat it more seriously.” Such admonishments have been echoed by many health professionals, especially in past years; but these warnings come to the attention of fewer activists on social networks and their audiences, many of whom are not of legal age and who could easily fall prey to such damage.

The Contagion of Suicide among Members of One Family 

Before turning to instances of suicide in the winter among children of this province and examining the official statistics, perhaps looking at one example of a family three of members of which took their own lives in three different decades will serve as a way forward from the previous discussion. Salman Towfiqian, a civil activist residing in Kohgiluyeh who was a claimant in this area in the past and the first to published news of the death of children, had previously written about the living conditions of his own sister’s family: “In October 1994, my sister Az Gol, the mother of two children, set herself on fire at the age of twenty because of the economic difficulties of her husband’s family and especially because of the privations of village life such as the lack of water in the village of Ali Abad (west of Dehdasht). Because of the lack of burn treatment facilities in our town (Dehdasht), my sister’s charred body was sent to Ahvaz (a roundtrip of 600 kilometers). After several days being on the verge of death, my sister succumbed in the hospital of Ahvaz, a city foreign to her, whereupon they sent her corpse back and they buried her in the cemetery of Dehdasht.” He continues by describing the present living conditions in that village: “After the passage of 29 years, the village of Ali Abad, like 33 other villages around Dehdasht, still has no drinking water…29 years ago Mohammad Movahhed became the representative of Kohgiluyeh in parliament, and after 24 years as a representative he again became a candidate.” But that is not the end of this story which includes the death of another member of this family: “The husband of that same sister of mine, after three years electrocuted himself and was buried in that same deprived village.” The possibility of what is generally described as the contagion of suicide, meaning the effects of this manner of death on close family and relatives, turned up as the destiny of this family played out: “After some years, one of my sister’s children, like many of the cousins and young people in our clan, hung himself and was buried in Dehdasht next to his mother.” This painful story, however, is not the only example in the chain of death; previously, there were abundant examples in regions of  Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad Province—they have been reported or the subject of university research in Ilam and other Zagros provinces. An example in this area dates back to suicide of young people of the same family in the space of forty days in a small town in Ilam Province, and the even more news making is the suicides of six petrochemical workers who had been thrown out of work in Ilam last year.

“Suicide is a beautiful death” But Private!

Suicide, that beautiful death I’ve set my heart on,

I think of it at least every two or three nights.

Every now and again, I’m filled with fear of windows,

Lest this time I definitely jump.”

The difficulty in getting access to precise statistics in Iran is now a long story, and in almost every field and area this absence or nondisclosure of clear figures on any aspect of society has caused problems and this lack of clarity has even caused problems in the monopolization of statistics or produced other negative side effects; however, in the case of suicide, officials have declared that there is another reason for not disclosing statistics—it decreases the number of these deaths. This justification comes when under the same circumstances we are witness to the publication of officially sanctioned content praising suicide or even promoting it; an example of this type of promotion is a poem from a book officially approved for publication called “This is its Very Name” by Alireza Azar. Two lines from the poem appear at the beginning of this paragraph. This example and several other lines have been used as lyrics in more than ten popular songs and tunes, and, more interestingly, such positive references to suicide have easily obtained official permission to be published and played millions of times under an Iranian regime that is replete with censorship and the moral guidance for culture. Comparison of this book and the songs composed from it with the situation of Iranian dissent in France and press coverage of suicide in the world’s media makes the difference—as well as the emphasis on preserving the mental health of citizens—more obvious. Another aspect that must also be added to this discussion is the way many of the world’s reputable and principled media address the topic of “protest or political suicide”; the last day of composing the present article happens to coincide with the second round of the reporting of the news of the self-immolation of an American officer in front of the Israeli embassy, an act in protest of the “genocide in Gaza.” Despite the removal of the video of this self-immolation from social media, it has been reproduced on many media platforms and, in a word, this death and the method of ending the most important human possession, meaning life, is being praised. (This particular example, although they can make a complete investigation, has at least by the second day of its reporting, come out in many of the reputable media with flying colors for how it was covered—however much, in the throes of conveying their own political message, these reputable media, by heeding humane principles in news coverage and exercising regard for the psychological well being of their audiences, have covered over the hidden propaganda in this subject.) 

The important discussion here, however, is, on the one hand, the ways the state and official institutions address the issue of the transparency of figures and statistics, and the process and basis of censorship and expurgation on the other. In a culture and society in which many of the elite ended their lives by suicide a couple of centuries ago or even, in some cases, enhanced their reputations by committing suicide, official figures are censored to counteract this phenomenon. On the other hand, works that directly propagate this type of death and, according to dozens of experts, have a detrimental effect on the psychology of susceptible individuals, are given permission to be disseminated widely and by various means (everything from poetry and its recitation to music, videos, and soundtracks of films). The issue at hand is the effect of such products on a society in which, like it or not, thinking about death is a prominent feature. Indeed. such deaths are linked to the life story of many noted individuals from the Sadeq Hedayat, the great author, to members of the former royal families, many of the present high-ranking officials, to one of the most famous athletes of this country, the world champion wrestler Takhti, to, even in this last decade, the death of dozens of radio and television presenters and film directors and actors. To end this paragraph, it would be good to refer to the work of one of the most blacklisted contemporary Iranian directors, Abbas Kiarostami, whom the world knows as the “poet of the cinema.” In one of his films, there is a sequence that wouldn’t be far off to call a manifesto against suicide. It is the poet of the cinema’s film The Taste of Cherry, which not only never portrays suicide with poetic imagery but also effectively turns the scene of a man one step away from killing himself into a manifesto in praise of life. In sequence, the main character, a man who has reached the end of the line, returns to the living by remembering the taste of cherries, and this sequence, without exaggeration, is one of the most watched and most effective depictions in praise of life in Iranian cinema. In conclusion, it must be said that, in this contentious structure, access to statistics on suicide is not simple but continuing to use sources and various methods it is possible to get close to the truth. It is, however, more difficult to track down figures from disadvantaged Iranian provinces because the system of transparency and gaining access to their figures involves several steps more complicated than the country as a whole.

Links in the Chain of Death during Several Days in Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad

Before turning to official data related to suicide and the struggle to reach numbers close to the truth, let us present the dossier describing several specific days in Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad Province that contains data that has been verified by the writer of this report. The reporter gained a wealth of detail in these dossiers by interviewing the family and relatives of those that took their lives.

A thirteen-year-old girl from Dishmuk in Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad waits to be married off in the same way several hundred other children in this province marry. Not yet fifteen, she is already pregnant and when she turns sixteen gives birth to a crippled child. The husband of this woman goes to another town in this province called “Landeh” for work, and the family joins him there, they go on with their lives. According to relatives, neighbors, and her family, when the child was 15 months old, the mother who was not quite 17, for various reasons sets herself on fire. Like the other burn victims in this province, she is transported to the emergency burn unit in the hospital in Ahvaz, a distance of 300 kilometers, but the burns proved too much for this “child mother,” and she dies in December of this year and is buried in the village of “Sargach” in the Dishmuk district. She is one of dozens of women who put an end to their lives by setting themselves on fire in the Dishmuck area. Summing up, the neighbors and relatives of this child say to the reporter from Etemad, “The misery of raising the crippled child, the heavy expenses incurred with a husband working as a laborer, and the domestic quarrels are details that because of the sensitivity of family matters in this province and the various explanations of relatives will not be discussed in his article. Exactly a month before this another woman around 19 in the village of Damhad Tall Zari, several kilometers from Dehdasht, also put an end to her life and died before reaching the hospital. On that very day 18 December 2023, a 15-year-old girl from the village of Darreh Khvajeh (3 kilometers from the city of Qaleh Ra’isi, that is about 70 kilometers from Dehdasht) also put an end to her life in another way, and also, in this case, the accounts of relatives about the day it happened differed, but all of them mentioned extreme poverty and the familial disputes arising from poverty or other things. In the space of several days after the death of the underage children mentioned above, a 51-year-old man, the father of three children in the village of Chah Bordi (10 kilometers from Dehdasht) committed suicide.

Also, several days later, around the second half of December, a 19-year-old woman, from Dehdasht but residing in Yasuf, also killed herself; relatives also gave differing accounts about the causes of the suicide. The vehemence of these accounts can be gauged by the way workers at several hospitals in Dehdasht speak about them; a male nurse in the only hospital in Dehdasht who wants to remain anonymous, summarizes the dossier this way: “See, each day they stress that we have at least one, but on average it is three suicides. In the case of women, it’s mostly self-immolation but for men it differs. Most, meaning more than 80 percent of them are between 12 to 20, 30 tops. We don’t write ‘suicide’ for many of them; not that we lie or write something strange, no, but something like ‘the patient ingested pills or had a heart attack, and we finally mark down heart attack as the cause.”

These examples are only from a short period of time. In those several days the figure is also much higher than these days (e.g. the young girl who was mentioned earlier, two 16-year-old boys named Parsa and Amirmehdi whose deaths were also reported in the national media)—they won’t be referenced in this section. Three senior officials in the province in their interviews with Etemad painted a general and astonishing picture of conditions during several previous months in the province, but before this report reached its final stage, all three contacted the Etemad reporter adamantly requesting that not even word of what they had said should be published and emphasized that even referring to the contents of what was said would trigger an official complaint on the part of the organizations where they worked. Under such circumstances, however, the road to the truth and to presenting a clear picture of the disadvantaged region, though difficult, was not completely closed. A more transparent picture of the present conditions of this province and the overall state of the populated regions in Iran’s Zagros mountains will emerge through continuing to look into previously disclosed official sources, statements by authorities, and several fresh academic studies. Before that, however, a peek at statistics related to the country as a whole would be useful and a way forward in reaching the truth about the damage caused under the current conditions in Iran; for in the next section, we shall, aided by official accounts, speak about the average doubling in these regions.

The Swift Increase in the Number of Suicides in Iran, an Increase of 50 percent in Four Years

To make up for the absence of official statistics which have to be announced by the Medical Examiner’s Office as a basic source of figures on suicide, we can look to other sources related to the topic like approximations and speculations. The decision not to announce the statistics was made as a way of preventing suicide, but, one might also ask, to what extent this decision can cause it. Before this, in October of this year, Farshad Momeni, the economist and member of the faculty of Allamah Tabatabai University in Tehran, on not revealing the suicide figures and society harms had said, “Go and publish baseless figures to bolster morale, but don’t hide the truth. CIA data about us is more comprehensive than official statistics.” Although in 2022-23, it was announced officially that statistics on suicide would not be announced and this was even before the existence of debates about the disparity between the reality and the announced statistics. For example, this year Reza Laripour, physician and spokesman for the Medical Association made an important point on this field, announcing, in sum, that some of the suicides are recorded under different designations. Addressing “educators,” he said, “For cultural reasons it is possible that, in some cases, suicide as the overall cause of death was not mentioned, rather heart attack and pressures on the brain and, in any case, another cause of death was recorded as the overall cause. These steps, of course do not contradict reality. The overall cause of death is the last thing that happens; look at death certificates on which four possible factors for death are recorded, but in the end it is the overall cause that is important. In some cases of suicide, when a person is under pressure, he falls prey to the stopping of breath or a heart attack, which, of course, is related to the type of the individual’s suicide, but, in the end, the final cause of death of this type is recorded, and the deceased victim of suicide as the cause of death falls to the wayside. In these situations, the death is not recorded—he has committed suicide but they write, for example, that death was due to cessation of heart or lung function or some other symptom.” In a situation such at that, the coroner attributes many suicides to other causes. In the absence of statistics from this organization, one must look elsewhere for numbers. This means we look at the statistics for suicide in the year 2021-22; Hassan Mousavi Chelak, head of the Association of Social Workers, had said about the level of suicide during this year, “Statistics for suicide in 2022-23 are confidential, but I can say that the number of deaths became greater. In general, the trend for deaths caused by suicide in the country is on the increase. In the area of suicide, the trend that we see in Iran is alarming. According to official statistics, in 2017-18 around 4,625 deaths by suicide were officially recorded. In 2021-22 the number of these deaths reached 6,244. Statistics for suicide in 2022-23 are confidential, but I can say that the number of deaths became greater.” Before this, in the summer of this year also, Etemad produced a detailed report on this topic, and in comparing police statistics with other sources, noted the increase in actual numbers vis a vis the official statistics: “The latest report on social justice indicators in 2121-22 shows that in the last decade, police forces recorded more than 40,000 deaths due to suicide. This number is more than two times the total numbers of murders in the decade 2011-22, which was reported at 20,000 deaths. In police force statistics, a considerable number of deaths exist under the heading “other instances of suspicious deaths” that are not identified with any details. The number of these suspicious deaths in 2011 was about twice the numbers for suicide and 12 times the number for murder. According to police figures, between the years 2016 and 2020, every year an average of 4,183 people in Iran passed away due to suicide.” Concerning statistics for 2022-23, in spite being never announced officially, Hamid Peyravi, head of the Scientific Association for the Prevention of Suicide in Iran, had said to Tojjar News, “Last year (2022), for every 100 people 7.4 had committed suicide and passed away. 120,000 people who attempted to commit suicide were reported by the Ministry of Health System. It is possible that some had also visited private health centers, and their attempts were never recorded.” These numbers obviously point to a steep rise in the number of suicides in the last decade and especially to the continuously upward movement. The important point about these figures, however, reveal how figures in various regions and provinces of the country differ from the national average, a topic that will be addressed more fully as this report continues.

The Incinerating of Life in Iran’s Baloutestan

While the suicide rate per 100,000 people increased in the country as a whole, according to police statistics, in one past decade, the average rate in provinces known as “settled Zagros” was always above the national average. For example, in the year that the national average was less than three in 100,000 people, the rate in Kermanshah Province was 11.8, in Elam was 11.5, and in Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad was 10.5, all of which were more than twice the national average. In these years, the relative order of these provinces on the list was changing, and according to statements of several current officials, in the past year the province of Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad had the highest rate, having taken the place of Ilam and Kermanshah. Although very few studies have been carried on about the reason for the rise in this rate when compared to other regions of the country, examination of figures related to the economy, the health and the quality of life, which are generally studied as “determinants of societal well-being,” can be a way forward. Examination of official statistics and numbers as well as several studies on “estimation of the quality of life in provinces of the country” shows that in all of these instances, these provinces occupy the lowest level of the table and in many cases one after another lie exactly at the bottom. In this section, one must also add this explanation that when speaking of the many factors involved in suicide, experts always stress the individual and social factors. This is while follow-up on the part of the Etemad reporter shows that research that considers all these factors in the rise in the suicide rate in settled Zagros has yet to be carried out. However, on the reasons behind the highest average suicide rate in Iran, economic factors and social conditions in Iran during these years have been investigated.

The Memento of Winter’s Frigid Blow; the Tendency to Commit Suicide in Society Protest Movements Have Been “Defeated”

“…It deceives you, this red glow in the sky doesn’t presage the day/O Companion! It’s the bruise of the cold on the ear, this, memento of winter’s frigid blow/…/They don’t want to answer your greeting/Gloomy weather, doors shut, heads retreated in collars, hands hidden/Breaths misty, hands hidden/hearts weary and sorrowful/Trees snow glazed skeletons/earth heartbroken, ceiling of the sky curtailed/sky and moon clouded by dust/It’s winter.”

The literature of Iran is full of works in which the languor after socio-political defeat had been generated, like the several lines from the famous poem “Winter” by Mehdi Akhavan-Sales (pen-named M. Omid) cited above, which was composed in the winter of 1954, during the bitter days after the failed coup of 28 Mordad 1953. The effects of these defeats, however, are not summarized by literature, for many lives were lost in their wake. In the beginning of fall of this year, Etemad, by examining data from social media on suicide, wrote that the number of searches of the word “suicide” in August 2023, meaning the last days of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement increased sixfold compared to six months prior to that. This is the same as what followed after the protests of 2017 and 2019 and the economic decline and the spread of poverty after COVID-19 in 2020, and in the case of the decline of street protests in 2023, talk of suicide increased considerably. This increase in content about suicide on the part of users of social networks in the wake of the failures of social movements was, of course, studied by sociologists and researchers in the arena of social psychology. For example, Hassan Rafi’i, vice-director of the Society of Psychologists in Iran, in an interview with ISNA used the concept of “political stress” and maintained that this concept is basically rooted in in certain political circumstances, “This concept basically took shape in American society. In 2019, researchers noticed that 40 percent of Americans were prey to psychological and nervous stress due to the political situation. These conditions arise fundamentally from uncertainty of the pollical circumstances and are presented by individuals with such symptoms as anxiety, sleeplessness, and even suicidal ideation, meaning a medley of symptoms related to nerves and temperament. These conditions emerge during elections for president mostly among the youth and political activists and especially among opponents of the social status quo. It appears that in our country, the source of political nervous stress comes over people who are only concerned about which thieves would win the most votes, not because of uncertainty about political conditions, rather conditions like the rise of violence, disturbances, and perceptions of injustice, corruption, even injustice and corruption per se even aggravate this matter.” The discussion of injustice is important in this respect because it appears it was broached many years ago in Iranian society and such sense of injustice grew among the people. For example, research conducted in 2018 before the COVID-19 pandemic by around 30 specialists in social issues, found inequality in income in society was among the ten most significant problems of the country. Similarly, another study of what was detrimental in the country, ordered by a health organization, found, on average, the perception of corruption in Iranian society in 2019 had risen to 65 percent while this number was 55 percent in the previous year. This member of the faculty of rehabilitation sciences and social welfare in the same interview referred to the research carried out by Dr. Nurbala (Professor of Psychology at the Tehran Medical University) on the social movement’s effect upon the mental health in various years, said, “This research  carried out in 2009 and years before that which was intended to screen for psychological disorders, showed that before 2009 about 23 percent of the people were dubious about mental disorder, but in 2009 and after the events of that year, the number increased to 34 percent; if one were to repeat Dr. Nurbala’s study under the new conditions perhaps the number to exceed 34 percent.” These explanations come at a time when news about suicides has proliferated in the last year and several days after the recent protest movement of the people of Iran, and even the number of suicides of people living in prison has also gone up markedly in the last year. Despite all these accounts, however, the social components and the condition of languor after the protest movements can speak to part of the reason why the average suicide rate in the country increased, but they are not necessarily indicative of why the average number of suicides of children increased in the settled Zagros regions.

The 20 Percent Suicide Rate in Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad—Women and Children are the Main Ones Who Are Sacrificed

When national statistics are designated “confidential,” access to numbers in several deprived provinces of Iran becomes complicated and difficult, but several senior officials in Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad as well as studies in the field and information from personnel in a hospital who don’t want their names mentioned, yield important data on suicide in this province. This year the head of public health in Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad placed suicide, spousal-domestic violence, and relations between couples at the top of the list of identified injuries based on polls and measures taken by experts, and now we know that a committee has been formed in this arena and even a team from the government has been sent in this same year to the province to investigate the severity of suicide and present procedures. Two years before this, exactly on the day that three people in the province committed suicide, the head of the intelligence division of the police forces of Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad in his briefing brought up a general report on suicide in this province: “We have witnessed suicides at times when there have been very weak motivations behind them, which was also very surprising to us. We believe experts should study the matter of why people’s threshold is so slight.” Experts, however, in many cases don’t even have access to precise numbers and information to begin an investigation. At the same time, several officials have given accounts of the severity of this social problem; for example, on 5 July 2023, before the new wave of suicides has been reported, the lieutenant governor of this province had said: “The number of suicides in Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad is so high that it has reached first to third place in the country.” An associate professor at the Yasuj Medical University, however, has brought up though provoking statistics in suicide in Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad in the summer of this year, saying that suicide has become the top complex problem in the province. In an important part of his interview with ILNA, however, Shir Ali Khoramin said on the suicide rate in this province: “In the past year 20 out of 100 people in this province have committed suicide. Figures for suicide in Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad Province have also surpassed that of Japan.” On must add to these remarks the remarks of the parliamentary representative from Yasuj also to get a better picture of the present conditions in the province. In the summer of 2024, Mehdi Rowshanfekr in relation to figures for suicide in the province said, “The figures for suicide in this province are very high such that in one region during a three year period, we have witnessed the suicides of 60 young people for reasons of poverty, addiction, unemployment, and the lack of resources. In Zila’i in Boyer-Ahmad, you see the face of a 14-year-old girl that looks like the face of a 60-year-old woman.” A senior official in the province brought up numbers higher than these in composing a report; however, three days before the publication of the report, they asked it not to be published three times citing the wishes of higher officials. Apart from this, even a cursory look at the official, published news from three previous months in the province and a simple calculation shows how much the numbers and rate of suicide in this province have surpassed the national average; what are the root causes of all this setting fire to the lives of young people and the women of the region of thousand-year-old oaks?

The Problem of Sexual Harassment: Why do Children Commit Suicide

Masoud Babei, social activist and documentary film maker, made Aberat, a documentary about suicide in Elam. He spent six years making the film there, and, in the process, guided several individuals inclined to suicide toward activity against this complex problem. In an interview with Etemad, he finds the weakness of state and governmental institutions in dealing with the intensification of suicide noteworthy; this is topic that is continually stressed in Etemad’s interview with Asghar Mirfardi, the sociologist and person informed about the form and structure of the Zagros region. (Two detailed interviews will be published in continuations of this case study in Etemad.) Alongside this fieldwork and sociological contributions, however, is a reference to the results of one of the latest and most important investigations of the subject of suicide among children in Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad that help to shine a light on the dark corners of this study. “Social Factors on the Effect of the Tendency toward Suicide among Female Children in Middle School in the Township of Boyer-Ahmad” is the title of the work of two sociologists at the most important university in the province, the State University of Yasuj. The 2020 study contains significant findings. What makes the study of inclination toward suicide of girls in this province doubly important is that, although we know the suicide rate among men is by degrees higher than that among women, in the province of Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad, the suicide rate among women is three time higher than that of men. The method of suicide for females is more violent, and most of the incidents of suicide concern child brides. Before the results were examined, data from the poll also provided important data; the researchers wanted to study the effect of being a child of divorce or the becoming the victim of sexual harassment and the tendency toward suicide. However, in this section the results indicate that about 14 percent of the girls in Boyer-Ahmad (52 out 373 people) experience sexual harassment and, in the words of the study “became the object of sexual mistreatment.” The figure of 20 percent of this society means 20 percent of children in first and second grade middle school, all of whom are under 18, which was also in the important data yielded by the poll. Now for the findings: “A significant correlation exists between the level of religiosity of the girls in Boyer-Ahmad township and their inclination to commit suicide. A significant correlation exists between a change in social-economic status and the inclination to commit suicide among girls in middle school in Boyer-Ahmad township. A significant correlation exists between the level of protection by social services among girls in middle school in Boyer-Ahmad township and their inclination toward suicide. A significant correlation exists between girls who have experienced the divorce of their parents and their inclination toward suicide. A significant correlation exists between having experienced sexual mistreatment and suicide among girls in the middle school in Boyer-Ahmad township. A significant correlation exists between failure in school and the inclination to suicide among girls in the middle school in Boyer-Ahmad township.” Although these findings are important and give a picture of the situation of children in these regions, many other elements have not been studied; for example, what is the origin of the depression, or, in the words of the head of the intelligence division of the police forces in the province, this weakness in the face of the pressures of life while, at the same time, residing among the lofty stone mountains and firm-standing thousand-year-old oaks? And why has lust for life subsided to this extent in a culture filled with bright colors and magnificent celebrations? At the end of December of this year in the Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad cemetery, I asked young people wearing black whose older brother had committed suicide not more than 40 days prior and who had expressed his many leanings toward oblivion, about the reason for this lack of desire for life or, at least, about professional psychological interventions. They answered, “Happy, are you? Which life are you talking about?” And without further explanation, they got busy cleaning off what was written on their brother’s tombstone:

“The sun shines on eternally its own orbit,

We walk in our own footsteps,

And we set every afternoon,

That light of the chaotic mind in the dark horizons far off,

Is a simple look deceiving me who is with the earth,

Pulling me to another sunrise again?