Two men jump into death, another cuts his wrists and a fourth hangs himself. Almost daily are the news in the media about people who who break down under the weight of unsolved problems : economical or health problems, or even worse the combination of both. Among the suicides is the man next door who gains tragic publicity after death. Or a prominent figure of the public life. But they all have something common: they live in Greece of recession and economic depression, in Greece where the state grabs the last cent from the pocket of the little man, where employers do not pay their employees in time, where more than 1.3 million people have no work. In a country where 4 million people live at the poverty line, while one million of them has even less than 6,000 euro annual income. In Greece, where people have no access to health care and no access to any future.
Well-known lawyer and PASOK-candidate Constantinos Resvanis was found dead in a pool of blood on Tuesday morning. He had jumped from the 5th floor where his office was located in Piraeus. Resvanis was president of the city council and member of the board of Piraeus Bar Association. He had survived another suicide attempt with a gun last December. He was 55 years old. Media claim, he had serious economic and health problems.
A day earlier, another lawyer, a 32-year-old man first cut his wrists and then jumped to death in downtown Thessaloniki. He did not leave a note explaining the reasons for this act.
On the same day, a 48-year-old man saw no other solution to his problems than hanging himself in his sheep ranch.
Οn Sunday, the president of the Federation of Professionals, Craftsmen and Merchants of Magnesia (OEVEM), Kostas Kogias was found by his wife in their home in Volos. The 61-year-old unionist had hanged himself. Media spoke of “health and economic problems”.
His funeral on Tuesday was attended by hundreds locals and turned almost into an anti-austerity protest.
“The death of Kostas was not due to health or economic problems,” his wife Litsa said during her speech at his grave. “It was the people’s indifference that led him there. Kostas was there for all people, for everybody, but nobody was there for him.”
When it comes to suicides the real reasons will be hardly told. But Greece has recorded a sharp suicides increase since the beginning of the economic crisis.
