Woman ends life at Makkah shelter

JEDDAH: A young woman was found hanging from the ceiling of her room at a shelter in Makkah recently, triggering a debate on social media about conditions at such facilities.

A note, purportedly written by her, saying “I decided to die to escape hell” and circulated by activists on social sites such as Twitter, has created a stir, local media reported on Tuesday.
The woman reportedly took the extreme step following a quarrel with a number of female inmates in the Social Affairs Ministry shelter. She used a piece of cloth to commit suicide, the report said.
Cap. Fahd Al-Malki of the Makkah police was quoted as saying that the security authorities received information about the incident on Saturday evening. “The body was sent to a hospital morgue for further procedures.”
It may be mentioned here that a female inmate of a shelter in the Eastern Province had earlier talked about the “days of oppression and darkness experienced at the shelter. “Dying is more merciful than living in the shelter. Food, which is supposed to be the easiest thing to get, does not come easily.”
A worker at another shelter was quoted as saying by a local publication that some children suffer the worst kind of psychological and physical torture. “With my own eyes I saw a worker beating on a child not more than 13 years of age. The child was badly beaten and he just went to sit in his room, as if he was used to be humiliated and beaten.”