(Global Voices) – A 12-year-old Ahwazi boy was reported dead by suicide on the evening of July 24, 2018, in the Republic of Iran, sparking outrage over the discrimination and hardship faced by the country’s minority Ahawzi population.
Suicide rates and cases of self-immolation continue to rise among the Ahwazi, an Arab community who live in Iran’s oil and gas-rich southern provinces and constitute 10 percent of the country’s population. Viewed as inferior because of their ethnicity, most Ahwazis exist below the poverty line, with limited or no access to employment, education, healthcare, or basic utilities.
The mother of the young boy, who was identified only as Meysam, returned to the family home in Abadan, in the province of Khuzestan, on Tuesday evening to find that her 12-year-old son had hanged himself. The boy was the eldest of two children, the other a five-year-old girl.
The mother, the sole wage-earner of the household, worked as a housekeeper and cleaner and struggled to provide for herself and her children. According to activists, shortly before her son’s death, the woman had sold some of the family’s meager possessions, including her son’s mobile phone and bicycle, in order to pay outstanding rent.
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