By IPS Correspondents
ISLAMABAD, Jan 2 2003 (IPS)

"I don’t want to live," Mohammad Asghar was whimpering when his family brought him to a government-run hospital last week, profusely bleeding from a wound caused by scissors pierced into his abdomen.

After an hour-long surgery, the transfusion of three pints of blood and 17 stitches in his belly, doctors on duty saved the life of 40-year-old man.

Asghar said he tried to commit suicide because he was frustrated and hopeless. He had not been able to find work for four months, and was unable to feed his wife and four children.

A mechanic and a resident of Rawalpindi, sister city of the capital Islamabad, Asghar is now recovering in the Rawalpindi Medical Hospital after he stabbed himself with a pair of scissors.

"I have been unemployed since my earlier employer at a garage fired me four months ago without any reasonàI just couldn’t face my starving family each day,” he recalled. ”I would return home empty handedàhouse rent, bills, school fee, all were overdue.”

Asghar is fortunate that his life was saved due to prompt action of his family.

But reports by non-governmental organisations say that more than 1,500 people killed themselves in this country in 2002. According to the Lahore-based organisation Maddadgar (Helper), 900 people committed suicide only in the first six months of 2002.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), however, puts the figure at 1,287 people who committed suicide in 2002. Out of these, 831 were men and 456 were women.

The organisation said that at least 912 people who attempted to kill themselves were saved due to timely medical aid.

"The basic factor responsible for increasing suicidal trends in society are the economic problems coupled with domestic and social disputesàSocial disparities, injustice, unemployment and the resulting economic stress, domestic and family disputes are the top most reasons that drive people to take this extreme action," the rights commission said.

According to the latest official figures, as many as one-third of the 140 million population in Pakistan lives below the poverty line.

The past three years under the military regime have seen the prices of basic commodities rise by between 20 to 300 percent, which many economists blame on tough conditionalities of the international financial institutions that the Musharraf government agreed to as part of its economic reforms.

The price of electricity alone was raised 11 times since 1999.

Social safety nets are non-existent in Pakistan, which stands 137th on the human development index of countries. Independent observers say the official figure of 7 percent unemployment is an underestimation, adding that the real figure is over 16 percent.

Against this backdrop, the human rights commission says that poverty-compelled suicide accounts for a high ratio of deaths in all age groups, but that this still has not prompted authorities to drastic enough steps to address this social ill.

"Suicide is more common among people between 15 and 35 years of age, both men and women," said the commission, noting these are the most productive ages.

According to Dr Iftikhar Hassan, a psychologist, suicide reflects increasing gloom and disappointment in society.

"An individual commits suicide when he feels he cannot face problems, no help is available to him and no one is receptive to him. In many cases, victims think of themselves as a burden on society or feel that their loved ones would be better off when they are gone," she explained.

The increasing trend in suicide resonated most loudly in June, when a former federal minister for environment and a respected development expert, Omar Asghar Khan, hanged himself from a ceiling fan in the southern port city of Karachi.

Although his family called it murder, police said they found a note apparently written by Omar suggesting that he had killed himself. Close friends said that he was suffering from clinical depression and was under tremendous political pressures, the nature of which they never described.

The high-profile death prompted the Public Accounts Committee formed by the government to note with concern the rising occurrence of suicides in the country.

The committee’s chairman, H U Beg, questioned the impact of spending of the five billion rupees (85 million U.S. dollars) that the government had allocated for the welfare of the destitute, and the needy, if society appears to be producing more people desperate enough to kill themselves.

In response, government officials say that their anti-poverty strategy – which covers all dimensions of poverty from powerlessness to marginalisation – is an attempt to address rising disparity and deprivation.

"As the first step, the military regime improved the macroeconomic indicators that would provide the required fiscal space to the elected government to take generous measures to provide relief to the people in terms of employment creation and basic needs," said a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Finance.

There have also been cases where people resort to suicide or threats of such, to protest social injustices or government policies.

A day after Christmas, a group of people displaced by the Chotiari dam project in Sindh province organised a protest camp in front of the Asian Development Bank (AsDB) office in Islamabad.

They were demanding compensation for the land they lost from the government and the bank, which is funding the project.

Their demands are still unmet, but some protesters said they were willing to die for them.

"Although suicide is forbidden in Islam, with no place to live, the victims of the dam will be forced to take this last resort," threatened Majeed Manguri, who is representing 400 displaced families that have yet to be paid compensation even though the dam is ready for inauguration.

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