This people have found no one to show them compassion,” read the title of a statement delivered by former Egyptian Defence Minister Abdel Fattah El-Sisi on 3 July 2013, announcing a military coup that removed the late Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected civilian president.

It never crossed Egyptians’ minds that the general who promised them “compassion”, and who has been president since 2014 — now serving a third term extending to 2030 — would preside over a period during which the lives of hundreds, perhaps thousands, would come to an end under the weight of harsh living and economic conditions.

The near-daily reports of suicides in Egypt have sparked widespread debate and raised pressing questions about the causes, implications and messages behind the phenomenon, as suicide has increasingly become, for some, an escape from poverty, illness and unemployment, and for others, a form of protest and dissent.

Egypt tops the list of Arab countries in terms of the number of suicides, recording 3,799 cases in 2016, including 3,095 men and 704 women, according to the World Health Organization.

Egypt tops the list of Arab countries in terms of the number of suicides, recording 3,799 cases in 2016, including 3,095 men and 704 women, according to the World Health Organization.

In 2019, 3,022 people died by suicide in Egypt, according to the organisation’s statistics, although the Egyptian government disputes the accuracy of these figures.

Egyptian authorities do not publish precise annual statistics on suicide cases and often remain silent about the underlying causes, usually attributing them to mental illness.

Local newspapers regularly report incidents of people taking their own lives through a variety of common methods, including hanging, ingesting poison, jumping from high places, drowning in the Nile, self-immolation, deliberately stepping in front of trains or metro carriages, slitting arteries, stabbing, or shooting themselves. However, the press tends to avoid using the word “suicide”, instead focusing on phrases such as “a body was found and investigations are underway to determine the circumstances”, according to a former editor-in-chief who spoke to Middle East Monitor on condition of........

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