Jordanian youth announced plans for a mass suicide yesterday, in apparent desperation at the unemployment they face in the Kingdom.
The event, scheduled for May 29, was planned as a satirical stunt. But in an atmosphere of growing hopelessness among unemployed young people, authorities did not appear to find the joke funny.
“Mass Suicide for the Unemployed”, organised by a group calling themselves “Unemployed Jordanian Graduates”, disappeared from Facebook after it had attracted hundreds of attendees. Now, local media report that authorities are seeking to apprehend those responsible for organising the event.
The stunt comes just a week after security forces prevented five young men – who also cited desperation at unemployment as a cause – from killing themselves by jumping from a building in Amman.
On the now-removed Facebook page for the mass suicide event, a brief introduction explained that the idea had emerged from exhaustion at searching for work in Jordan’s grim economic climate. Government neglect and exploitation of young people at the hands of business owners were also cited, and international media were invited to the event that was set to take place on a bridge in an upscale area of Amman.
“We have energy and won’t allow it to be exploited, either from the poor management of the Jordanian economy or the rampant corruption in the nation,” organisers wrote in Arabic, adding that they’d been driven to mass suicide after exhausting every other possible solution.
But past activity by the event’s organisers suggests their motives weren’t entirely sincere.
On Saturday, before the mass suicide event was created, a conversation on the “Unemployed Jordanian Graduates” Facebook page turned to last week’s attempted suicide in Amman – and one user suggested that the men involved had been given jobs after authorities stopped them jumping to their deaths.
For some the rumor demanded an obvious response: if attempting suicide could lead to a job offer, perhaps it might be worth a try. Jokily, users suggested inviting the media to a mass suicide of their own.
A few days later, the group created the Facebook event apparently inviting friends to the event.
Al Bawaba contacted organisers of the event for comment on the situation, but did not receive a reply. A Facebook notification said the event had been cancelled by its creators but local media said it had been removed by Facebook.
For authorities and civil society in Jordan the prospect of mass suicide is no laughing matter. Last week’s suicide attempt was highlighted by commenters as a serious concern, and ex-Prime Minister Samir al-Rifai said on Twitter that it should “sound the alarm” about unemployment in Jordanian society.
٥ شباب أردنيين يحاولون الانتحار بعد فقدان الأمل بفرص كريمة للعمل،علينا قرع نواقيس الخطر وأن يكون عنوان المرحلة: البطالة، البطالة، ثم البطالة
— Samir Al-Rifai (@SamirAlRifai) 11 May 2016
5 Jordanian young men tried to commit suicide after losing hope for decent opportunities to work. We need to sound the alarm and focus our efforts on one theme: unemployment, unemployment, unemployment.
Reactions to the Facebook mass suicide, however, suggested it wasn’t being taken quite so seriously.
While some Jordanians expressed sympathy for the young men, most suggested they were attention seeking, or that the mass suicide idea was a tasteless joke or stunt.
“I don’t think it should be at fourth circle, there’s a lot of police checkpoints and if they try and do anything like this they’ll fail,” Mona Aoudallah wrote on the Facebook page, adding that there weren’t many tall buildings in the area.
“So you saw the five guys who wanted to kill themselves at Dakhliyya Circle and decided to copy them?” Khaled al-Atayat continued “If you want to kill yourself, fine, but there’s no need to make all this drama. As far as work goes there’s plenty of people without work.”
Al Bawaba have reached out to Amman’s security forces for comment on the subject.
