An 11 year-old girl in Kai Ping Tang Kou Town hanged herself with electrical wire after being criticized by her parents for quarelling with her younger female cousin, Southern Metropolis Daily reports. An official autopsy confirmed the death was a suicide.
While the family has refused to speak to reporters, relatives and neigbours have shed some light on what happened. At approximately 8:00pm, the girl’s parents came home from work and sat down to dinner but when they called their daughter to join them, she did not respond. When they went upstairs to find her, they found their daughter hanging from the ceiling.
According to a neighbour, the daughter was upset that when she turned to her mother for support after the quarrel, her mother scolded her for getting into the argument. Another neighbour claims that the girl, one of three children, would habitually lock herself in her bedroom after arguing with family members: ”Her parents would give her anything she wanted… they spoiled her very much”, said the neighbour.
The number of suicides has risen in the country in recent years, with approximately 287,000 Chinese killing themselves annually, the 9th highest rate in the world according to the World Health Organization. The situation is particularly bad in rural areas, where the suicide rate is three times higher than that of urban centers, and accounts for 75% of China’s total suicides. Perhaps most disconcerting, China’s female suicide rate is 25% higher than the male rate, with Chinese aged 15-34 most likely to kill themselves.
