Kaohsiung must act on the city’s high suicide rate, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Kaohsiung mayoral candidate Ko Chih-en (柯志恩) said yesterday, while Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁), who is seeking re-election, said that suicide “should not be an election issue.”
Ko said Chen was ignoring city residents’ problems after reports that eight bodies of people who had apparently committed suicide were found in the city’s rivers within 37 days.
“Is Chen Chi-mai taking residents’ suffering seriously?” Ko wrote on social media on Friday.
Photo: Ge Yu-hao, Taipei Times
Chen, of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), yesterday said that suicide is a serious issue that should not be dragged into election campaigns.
He had never seen the issue being discussed during past election campaigns, he added.
His administration has addressed the suicide issue and worked on it with community volunteers and clinical psychiatrists, he said.
Photo: CNA
The city’s suicide rate has decreased since he took office, Chen said.
Ko had said that there had been 4,700 suicides in the city over the past 10 years.
The Kaohsiung Health Bureau said the most suicides were recorded in 2019, when Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT was mayor.
Ko yesterday said that Chen’s administration “always uses Han Kuo-yu as a scapegoat,” while Kaohsiung’s suicide rate remained the highest among the six special municipalities.
“Chen should hurry up and think of effective ways to prevent suicides,” she said.
Ko’s campaign office released a statement saying that the number of suicides in Kaohsiung rose from 453 in 2020 to 490 last year, with Chen as mayor.
“We bring up the kind of issues that concern the city’s residents because we hope the situation can improve,” the statement said.
Separately, suicide prevention volunteers and clinical psychiatrists issued a joint statement saying that discussing suicide at campaign events was “worrisome and contemptible,” calling on candidates to avoid the topic.
“This talk evokes painful memories for the friends and relatives of suicide victims,” the statement said. “It also risks encouraging copycat suicides.”
Additional reporting by Fang Chih-hsien
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