Internet group suicide stopped

2004-10-21 11:57

Taipei - Taiwan police have intervened and prevented 16 people who met on an internet group suicide site from killing themselves, the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) said on Thursday.

CIBs internet monitoring personnel tracked 16 youths after a Taiwan newspaper had reported on several suicide websites, similar to ones in Japan where nine people met and committed suicide together in two groups last week.

"We found three suicides websites and the most popular one was called Suicide Family which has more than 200 members. We traced 16 members who had expressed the wish to commit group suicide," a CIB police officer told the Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa by phone.

Referred for counselling

The 17 to 22-year-olds were referred to Department of Health (DOH) authorities for counselling.

DOH official Hsieh Kuo-chen said the 16 include a dozen students, one soldier and three unemployed youths.

"We informed the students' schools to give counselling to the students. Social workers are counselling the jobless youths and trying to find jobs for them," she said by phone.

Taiwan's suicide rate has been rising in recent years due to work stress, isolation, rising unemployment and lack of a support system.

Last year 3 159 Taiwanese committed suicide - an average of 8.7 suicides per day and one suicide every three hours.

Taiwan's suicide rate is 14.1 suicides per every 100,000 people. Lithuania has the world's highest suicide rate with 44 and Japan has the highest suicide rate in Asia with 22 for every 100 000 people. - dpa

- SAPA