US Female physicians at elevated risk for suicide

Many physicians struggle with depression and burnout; the consequences, can be tragic

University of California - San Diego

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In a new analysis of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine found that female physicians in the U.S. had a 53% higher suicide risk compared to females in the general population. Physicians were also more likely to experience various risk factors for suicide, such as mental health struggles or legal issues. The findings, published in JAMA Psychiatry, underpin the need for more comprehensive suicide prevention strategies in a population that experiences unique and significant workplace stressors.

“We're seeing slow but steady progress in promoting wellness in the medical profession, but there’s clearly still a long way to go,” said senior study author Sidney Zisook, M.D., a professor of psychiatry at UC San Diego School of Medicine and a psychiatrist at UC San Diego Health. “Many suicides could be prevented if we destigmatize mental health treatment and make it more accessible and feasible for physicians.”

For physicians, mental health struggles like burnout and depression are all-too-common due to the high-stress nature of their profession. Physicians are regularly required to work long hours within complex health systems and are also responsible for making life-or-death decisions. While older research has suggested that physicians may be at higher risk for suicide than the general population, more recent studies have been inconclusive. Recent research is also ambiguous about the role of gender in suicide risk among physicians.

“Our study helps confirm the fact that physicians are at high risk for suicide, and it tells us that we need to be even more vigilant about this when it comes to female physicians,” said first author Hirsh Makhija, M.S., a postgraduate volunteerresearcher in the Department of Psychiatry at UC San Diego School of Medicine. “Existing suicide prevention programs may not be enough.”

The new study, which analyzed data from the National Violent Death Reporting System from 2017 to 2021, helps fill this gap in knowledge. By investigating more than 137,000 suicides across the U.S., the researchers found:

• While males accounted for 80% of physicians who died by suicide, female physicians had a 53% higher rate of suicide compared to females in the general population.
• Compared to the general population, physicians of either sex who died by suicide were 35% more likely to experience depressed mood, 66% more likely to experience other mental health issues, more than twice as likely to experience job problems, and 40% more likely to experience legal problems.
• Physicians were 85% more likely to use poisoning for suicide, and more than four times as likely to use sharp instruments.
• Physicians were 75% more likely to test positive for benzodiazepines, 32% more likely to test positive for opiates or opioids, 53% more likely to test positive for cardiovascular agents, and almost three times as likely to test positive for drugs not prescribed for home use.

While the study did not seek to determine why female physicians are at higher risk of suicide, the researchers hypothesize that it is due to factors such as under-recognition for their work, inequitable pay and opportunities for promotion, sexual harassment on the job, and often greater domestic responsibilities leading to work-life imbalance.

The findings highlight the need for comprehensive and multimodal strategies for enhancing suicide prevention. Specifically, the study authors recommend limiting access to lethal means, such as medications and sharp instruments and improving mental health resources and support for physicians. They also emphasize the need to continue investigating the root causes of mental health struggles in the health care field as a whole in order to develop new and better approaches to suicide prevention.

“Our work underpins the need for continued efforts to destigmatize mental health care and shift the culture of medicine from one of self-reliance and silent suffering to one of sharing, caring, and connecting,” added Zisook, “Self-care and self-compassion should be part of what it means to be a consummate medical professional.”

Link to full study.

Additional coauthors of the study include Judy E. Davidson at UC San Diego School of Medicine, Kelly C. Lee at UC San Diego Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Arianna Barnes at Barnes Jewish Hospital and Amanda Choflet at Northeastern University.

The study received no external funding.

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Journal

JAMA Psychiatry

DOI

10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2024.4816 

COI Statement

Kelly Lee reported honoraria for speaking on adult attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder from WebMD Health Corp and consulting for Biogen outside the submitted work. Sidney Zisook reported grants from Compass Pathways outside the submitted work. No other disclosures were reported.

US National incidence of physician suicide and associated features

JAMA Psychiatry

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About The Study: The findings of this study show a higher incidence of suicide for U.S. female physicians compared to female non-physicians. Comprehensive and multimodal suicide prevention strategies remain warranted. 

Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Hirsh Makhija, MS, email himakhij@ucsd.edu.

To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/

(10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2024.4816)

Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

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Embed this link to provide your readers free access to the full-text article This link will be live at the embargo time https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2024.4816?guestAccessKey=5b54efa5-f490-4c36-9879-6e5bd722985e&utm_source=for_the_media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_content=tfl&utm_term=022625

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Journal

JAMA Psychiatry

 

Which veterans have the highest risk of dying by suicide? New study sheds light

Data from the first year of VA-wide Comprehensive Suicide Risk Evaluations for veterans show firearm access, suicidal thinking and suicide planning were major predictors of suicide death

Michigan Medicine - University of Michigan

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In the ongoing effort to reduce the number of veterans who die by suicide, a new study identifies key factors that predict whether veterans who received a Comprehensive Suicide Risk Evaluation, the standardized suicide risk assessment implemented nationally in the Veterans Health Administration, will go on to die by their own hands.

The findings could help Veterans Affairs clinicians and others work to prevent more suicide deaths among veterans in this high-risk category.

The study focused on veterans who received a CSRE assessment from a VA clinician. The CSRE program launched nationally six years ago, and the new study looks at suicide deaths among veterans who received an assessment during its first year.

Even after going through the CSRE process, the new study finds that veterans who were actively experiencing suicidal thoughts, had made suicide plans, had access to firearms, or had a history of mental health inpatient stays were most likely to die by suicide, compared with others who had been through a CSRE but didn’t have these risk factors.

The study looked at suicide deaths both in the first 30 days and the first year after a CSRE.

In all, there were 791 suicides following the 269,374 CSREs that were completed for 153,736 Veterans Health Administration patients between November 2019 and December 2020, the study finds. Of those, 144 suicides occurred within 30 days after a CSRE; the rest were within a year of the CSRE visit.

While most of those who died by suicide after a CSRE had been classed as having an especially high risk of near-term or long-term suicide based on their answers on the CSRE scale, there were also suicide deaths among those who fell into the lower-risk category on their CSRE.

The study, published in JAMA Network Open by a team from the University of Michigan Medical School’s Department of Psychiatry, the VA Center for Clinical Management Research, and the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System, was led by Kevin Saulnier, Ph.D., a psychologist who has performed CSREs as part of his practice at VA Ann Arbor’s mental health clinic.

“Suicide prediction has long been a challenge for the field, so this finding that some of the risk factors that are routinely assessed in the Veterans Health Administration predicted future risk of suicide is important,” says Saulnier. “While this study did not look at what treatments and supports patients received after their CSRE, it can immediately inform clinicians as they use their judgement to work with patients.”

Saulnier and colleagues also recently published another paper in JAMA Network Open showing that suicide mortality was lower among veterans newly diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder who received the evidence-based treatment know as cognitive processing therapy or prolonged exposure (CPT/PE).

More about CSREs

CSRE sessions, which can take about a half hour, are designed to evaluate a veteran’s current risk factors and protective factors for suicide using a standardized checklist.

Part of the appointment can be the development of a safety plan that maps out who the veteran can turn to when they feel suicidal, including the Veterans Crisis Line that can be reached by phone at 988, by text at 838255 and by online chat at https://www.veteranscrisisline.net/.

Depending on the clinician’s judgment and the patient’s preferences, a CSRE can also lead to referrals to specific mental health care, the provision of free gun locks for any firearms the veteran possesses, and other steps.

In some states, including Michigan, “red flag” laws allow clinicians, family members and law enforcement to seek a court order to remove firearms from the home of a person they believe to be a danger to themselves or others. The U-M Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention offers a free toolkit to help individuals understand this option, called an Extreme Risk Protection Order.

Using research to improve care

The new study could help clinicians prioritize firearm-related steps for CSRE patients, as well as escalating patients with current suicide-related thoughts or plans to higher levels of care including inpatient psychiatric care if needed.

Saulnier notes that predictive models for suicide have already become part of VA care management decisions, and that the new findings could help refine those models. He and colleagues are also planning to study what treatments veterans received after having a CSRE, and also non-fatal suicide attempts.

The study only includes veterans receiving care from the VA, where brief screening for suicide risk is universal. CSREs have become standard care for those whose initial screen shows that they have been having suicidal thoughts or thinking about how they might attempt suicide.

Veterans cared for in non-VA settings may not get screened for suicide risk unless they’re seeking care for a behavioral health issue, though more hospitals and health systems are now implementing universal screening and follow-up evaluations for those who screen positive.

More about the study

In addition to the factors that predicted suicide deaths by 30 or 365 days after a CSRE, Saulnier and colleagues also found some factors were actually linked to a protective effect, or reduced risk.

More research on this is needed, he said – including research on those who completed CSREs and were considered very high risk for immediate or later suicide but did not die by suicide during the follow-up period.

The team also found that some factors that have been seen in other research as protective against suicide risk were not associated with lower risk of suicide death, such as connection to others or a sense of hope. This may be due to the very high risk of suicide that veterans who receive CSREs already face.

In an accompanying commentary, Rebecca Rossom, M.D., M.S. of the HealthPartners Institute wrote, “As the largest integrated health system in the US, true universal suicide risk screening followed by safety planning in the Veterans Health Administration could provide powerful evidence regarding the effectiveness of these approaches to suicide prevention. These findings are critical as the US continues to grapple with the public health epidemic of suicide.”

More information about veteran suicide risk, prevention, options for reducing access to lethal means such as firearms, and crisis support is available at https://www.mentalhealth.va.gov/suicide_prevention/index.asp

If you or someone you know may be considering suicide, or having a mental health or addiction-related crisis, the 988 Lifeline is available for free to anyone, at all times, in both English and Spanish. Call 988 from any phone, text 988 from a mobile device, or visit https://988lifeline.org/ for live webchat, information on available help, and live help via videophone for people who are Deaf or hard of hearing.  Or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741.

 

In addition to Saulnier the study’s authors are Courtney L. Bagge, Ph.D.; Dara Ganoczy, M.P.H.; Nazanin H. Bahraini, Ph.D.; Jennifer Jagusch, M.S.W.; Avinash Hosanagar, M.D.; Mark A. Ilgen, Ph.D.; and Paul N. Pfeiffer, M.D. Saulnier, Bagge, Pfeiffer and Ilgen are members of the U-M Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation and the VA CCMR. Ilgen is also a member of the U-M Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention.

Suicide Risk Evaluations and Suicide in the Veterans Health Administration, JAMA Network Open, doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.61559

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Journal

JAMA Network Open

DOI

10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.61559 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Suicide Risk Evaluations and Suicide in the Veterans Health Administration

Article Publication Date

25-Feb-2025

Opinion

Surviving war, Afghan families are now caught in the crosshairs of US refugee restrictions

(RNS) — Thousands of Afghan wartime allies have completed years of security vetting and final medical checks, but their travel is now indefinitely on hold.

Afghan refugees hold placards during a meeting to discuss their situation after President Donald Trump paused U.S. refugee programs, in Islamabad, Pakistan, Friday, Jan. 24, 2025. When the U.S. pulled out of Afghanistan in August 2021, it carried tens of thousands of Afghans to safety. But years later, many others are still waiting to be resettled. Those are Afghans who helped the war effort by working with the U.S. government and military or Afghan journalists and aid workers whose former work puts them at risk under the Taliban. (AP Photo/Anjum Naveed)

Kami L. Rice
January 31, 2025

(RNS) — “We will bring honor to your name,” my Afghan friends said to me across our glowing Zoom screens.

My team had just informed the group that a church in my hometown in Upper East Tennessee was eager to serve as the family’s sponsor through the Welcome Corps private sponsorship program.

For months, we’d been too busy pulling details to marvel at the opportunity to welcome another family of Afghans to the holler-filled mountain community that birthed and raised me. It was the Afghan family’s gift of thanks — pledging honor is a deep sign of respect in their culture — that caught my breath and gave me a sense of wonder.

I’ve returned to those words again and again. Since the Taliban retook Kabul three years ago as American troops withdrew, Allied Shepherd has been helping Afghans reach safety. When people thank us for our work, we appreciate it, but, like combat veterans who sometimes chafe at hearing “Thank you for your service,” we also know that anyone outside this beautiful, exhausting work can’t begin to fathom what we and our clients have been through.

This Afghan family’s humbling gift of honor hit deeper. They are appropriately weighting this work because they are living it more than I am. They know the real cost. Without understanding their Dari language, we’ve come to know the extroverted mom, the shy daughters who are my new sisters, the persistent brother who made sure we didn’t forget them. They are the ones who have suffered. Yet they thank me.

The father of the family is a judge who presided over hearings of members of the declared terrorist organizations that now run the Afghan government. In a country of reprisal killings, the judge is a hunted man. His family escaped three years ago to neighboring Pakistan — a country that doesn’t want Afghans and regularly deports even those there legally — and waited while they waded through the interminable immigration processes to come to the United States.

In the past month the family finally completed their interviews, medical exams and other extensive vetting necessary for approval. We entered 2025 cautiously hopeful, just waiting for them to receive travel documents so flights could be scheduled.

The team at the evangelical Christian church in Tennessee has been preparing for the family’s arrival, securing housing, collecting household furnishings and organizing to best help the family get their feet under them in smalltown Tennessee. The judge’s wife is already planning to thank everyone with delicious Afghan chai and meals.

But all those excited preparations slammed into a brick wall last week.

On Inauguration Day President Trump signed an executive order suspending the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program for at least 90 days, “until such time as the further entry into the United States of refugees aligns with the interests of the United States.” The order states that the suspension “shall take effect at 12:01 am eastern standard time on January 27, 2025.” But within 48 hours of signing, five days before the deadline, vetted refugees manifested for travel were already notified that their flights were cancelled.

According to #AfghanEvac, our judge’s family is not alone. Thousands of Afghan wartime allies have completed years of security vetting and final medical checks, but their travel is now indefinitely on hold. Among those affected are families of at least 200 Afghan-American U.S. service members. These families face retribution by the Taliban because of their U.S. military relatives.

The Afghan advocacy community knew this suspension might happen, given the travel bans President Trump instituted upon taking office for his first term. That’s why we had preemptively stated the case for continued Afghan relocation and resettlement efforts in a letter signed by more than 1,600 veterans, frontline civilians, advocates, elected officials, former ambassadors and everyday Americans.

Afghan refugees line up for food in a dining hall at Fort Bliss’ Doña Ana Village, in New Mexico, where they are being housed, Friday, Sept. 10, 2021.

 (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Watching Trump campaign alongside families of service members killed during the Afghanistan withdrawal gave us hope that he understood the costs of the war. He held the Biden-Harris administration to account for the ways they betrayed Americans, U.S. service members and our Afghan allies as the 20-year war ended. We know he values loyalty, and our Afghan allies merit all the protection unwavering loyalty earns.

So the optimistic among us hoped that the president would protect our allies when he signed his promised day-one executive orders.

But he did not protect them. His orders have instead thrown their lives into new distress, when they have already lived a lifetime of hardship.

We are doing everything we can to call his attention to this unintended consequence, reminding him of how so many Afghans have stood by America and Americans, making the U.S. safer and stronger.

We are asking fellow Americans to join us by contacting their members of Congress to express support for maintaining immigration pathways for our Afghan allies. Polling shows Americans overwhelmingly support keeping our pledge to Afghan allies who helped U.S. forces against the Taliban. One poll, conducted by veteran organization With Honor and Ipsos in October 2023, showed that 77% of Americans said these Afghans would “be welcomed if they were resettled in their community.”

This polling is borne out in real action. In a statement last week, Welcome.US CEO Nazanin Ash noted, “In just three years, over 2 million Americans across all 50 states and 12,000 zip codes have raised their hands to privately sponsor newcomers through safe, legal, and orderly pathways.”

Through Welcome Corps, one of the private sponsorship pathways Welcome.US coordinates, teams of at least five Americans commit to privately funding a qualifying refugee family’s arrival in their community and to guiding them through the administrative aspects of settling in. These commitments by volunteers contradict the executive order’s statement that “the United States lacks the ability to absorb large numbers of migrants, and in particular, refugees, into its communities in a manner that does not compromise the availability of resources for Americans, that protects their safety and security, and that ensures the appropriate assimilation of refugees.”

People of faith are especially important in reminding President Trump to protect and stand by our Afghan allies. We helped elect him, and we need to hold him to account for representing our values. Christians in particular can sign a World Relief letter urging the president to both “uphold his commitment to protecting persecuted Christians” and “sustain the refugee resettlement program.”

The judge’s family will be the second family this Tennessee church group welcomes to our community. In 2022 my Afghan friend Karima, reeling from the death of her husband, told me she just wanted to resettle somewhere safe with good schools for her little boys. I suggested my hometown. She did her own research and decided that this was the place for her.

More than two years later she works as a preschool teacher, her sons flourish in school, and her home is a hub of social life, including people from the church group that sponsored her. It’s because the experience has been so rewarding that these East Tennesseans are ready to welcome a new family.

But they can only provide safety for the judge’s family if President Trump will provide Afghans with an exception to his suspension of the refugee program. If he honors Afghan allies’ loyalty, our Afghan allies will remember. And they will bring honor to his name, just as my Afghan friends want to do for me when they finally arrive to make my dear Appalachian hometown their new American hometown.

(Kami Rice is a cofounder of Allied Shepherd and editor of Anthrow Circus. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

POLTICAL PRISONERS

French court orders release of Lebanese militant held since 1984

By AFP
November 15, 2024

Abdallah had been sentenced to life in prison 

- Copyright AFP Alexander NEMENOV

A French court on Friday ordered the release of pro-Palestinian Lebanese militant Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, jailed for 40 years for the killing of two foreign diplomats, prosecutors said.

The court said Abdallah, first detained in 1984 and convicted in 1987 over the 1982 murders, would be released on December 6 provided he leaves France, French anti-terror prosecutors said in a statement to AFP, adding that they would appeal.

“In (a) decision dated today, the court granted Georges Ibrahim Abdallah conditional release from December 6, subject to the condition that he leaves French territory and not appear there again,” the prosecutors said.

Abdallah, a former guerrilla in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), was sentenced to life in prison for his involvement in the murders of US military attache Charles Robert Ray and Israeli diplomat Yacov Barsimantov.

Washington has consistently opposed his release but Lebanese authorities have repeatedly said he should be freed from jail.

Abdallah, now 73, has always insisted he is a “fighter” who battled for the rights of Palestinians and not a “criminal”. This was his 11th bid for release.

He had been eligible to apply for parole since 1999 but all his previous applications had been turned down, except in 2013 when he was granted release on the condition he was expelled from France.

However the then interior minister Manuel Valls refused to go through with the order and Abdallah remained in jail.

The court’s decision on Friday is not conditional on the government issuing such an order, Abdallah’s lawyer, Jean-Louis Chalanset, told AFP, hailing “a legal and a political victory”.

– Veteran inmate –

One of France’s longest serving inmates, Abdallah has never expressed regret for his actions.

Wounded in 1978 during Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, he joined the Marxist-Leninist PFLP, which carried out a string of plane hijackings in the 1960s and 1970s and is banned as a terror group by the US and EU.

Abdallah, a Christian, then in the late 1970s founded his own militant group the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Factions (LARF) which had contact with other extreme-left militant outfits including Italy’s Red Brigades and the German Red Army Faction (RAF).

A pro-Syrian and anti-Israeli Marxist group, the LARF claimed four deady attacks in France in the 1980s. Abdallah was arrested in 1984 after entering a police station in Lyon and claiming Mossad assassins were on his trail.

At his trial over the killing of the diplomats, Abdallah was sentenced to life in prison, a much more severe punishment than the 10 years demanded by prosecutors.

His lawyer Jacques Verges, who defended clients including Venezuelan militant Carlos the Jackal, described the verdict as a “declaration of war”.

There remains a broad swell of support for his cause among the far left and communists in France. Last month, 2022 Nobel literature prize winner Annie Ernaux, said in a piece in communist daily L’Humanite that his detention “shamed France”.

Jailed Russian poet could be ‘killed’ in prison, warns wife


By AFP
November 15, 2024

Russian poet Artyom Kamardin, 34, was jailed for seven years for reciting anti-war poetry. Fellow poet Yegor Shtovba, 23, was sentenced to five a half year for attending the public reading - Copyright AFP Alexander NEMENOV
Anna SMOLCHENKO

The wife of a Russian poet jailed for seven years for reciting anti-war verses said she was afraid he could be killed in prison after he was sexually assaulted with a dumbbell during his arrest.

Artyom Kamardin was arrested in September 2022 after reciting — on a Moscow square where dissidents have been gathering since the late 1950s — a poem that fiercely criticised Russia’s war against Ukraine.

In December 2023, Kamardin was convicted of inciting hatred and undermining national security. Fellow poet Yegor Shtovba, 23, was sentenced to five and a half years for attending the public reading.

Kamardin, 34, lost his appeal last month and is soon expected to be sent to a penal colony to serve his term.

“I am afraid they will kill him,” his wife Alexandra Popova, 30, who is still based in Russia, told AFP during a visit to Paris. “He is being treated a bit like a Ukrainian. Like a Ukrainian captive.”

In a widely-publicised case, both Kamardin and Popova were beaten and humiliated when security forces stormed their apartment the day after he read his poem, entitled “Kill me, militiaman!”, according to them and rights activists.

The reading took place days after President Vladimir Putin announced a partial military mobilisation, the first such call-up since World War II.

Kamardin’s poem from 2015 is peppered with swear words and takes aim at pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.

“Kill me, militiaman! You’ve already tasted blood! You’ve seen how brothers-in-arms dig mass graves for the brotherly people,” Kamardin declaimed near the statue of Soviet poet Vladimir Mayakovsky.

– ‘Fascist dictatorship’ –

In a statement from jail, Kamardin said poetry helped him reflect on “my homeland’s transformation into a fascist dictatorship”.

“I was born in a free Russia,” he wrote. “Now this country no longer exists, it was killed and devoured by the monster that calls itself Russia now.”

During the raid Kamardin was sexually abused with a dumbbell handle, according to Popova.

Security force members used their phones to record the assault, she said. “There was a lot of blood,” Popova added. Kamardin was then told to go on his knees to record an apology video.

The men also threatened to gang-rape Popova. “At one point they locked themselves in a room with me and pretended to start taking off their trousers,” she said. The couple were also called Nazis.

Amnesty International has said that the details of “his arrest and torture are horrific even against the abysmal human rights standards of today’s Russia.”

Russian propaganda has mounted a campaign of harassment against the couple. “Sit tight, or they will kill you,” Kamardin was already told in jail, according to his wife.

Putin has used the war, now in its third year, to radically transform Russian society.

Independent media outlets have been shut, top rights groups dismantled, criticism of the war outlawed, and dissidents jailed, muzzled or pushed out of the country. Putin’s top opponent Alexei Navalny, 47, died suddenly in an Arctic colony in February.

Popova, who is part of a six-member collective supporting Russian political prisoners, said the country had changed since the start of the war.

Many people now justify “the killing of other people”.

Even if Moscow’s war against Ukraine comes to an end, repression in Russia might not stop, she said.

“Society has become cruel,” Popova added. “People inform on each other.”

The head of the Kremlin’s Human Rights Council, Valery Fadeyev, said last month there was no repression in Russia, with just “minimal restrictions” against those who he said “are essentially siding” with the West.


– ‘Only chance to save people’ –


Popova urged Western governments to do everything to help free Russian political prisoners.

She praised the release of 16 Russian dissidents and foreign nationals in a prisoner swap on August 1 and said more such exchanges were needed.

“People die in Russian prisons,” she said, calling them “victims of war”.

“These are the people who oppose what is happening now and they pay for their position with their health and lives.”

In July, Pavel Kushnir, a 39-year-old pianist and anti-war activist, died in detention in the city of Birobidzhan near the China–Russia border.

In April, Alexander Demidenko, a 61-year-old volunteer who helped Ukrainian refugees, died in jail in the southern city of Belgorod.

“Artyom has a chance to get out earlier if there are any exchanges of political prisoners,” Popova said.

“The only chance now to save people from Russian prisons is through exchanges.”

While many Kremlin critics have left Russia, Popova said she had no plans to go. She wanted to keep supporting political prisoners, above all her husband.

“My heart is bleeding,” she said. “I have to be near him.”

Russia shuts Moscow’s famed gulag museum


By AFP
November 14, 2024

The gulag was a vast network of prison labour camps set up in the Soviet Union - Copyright AFP/File VASILY MAXIMOV

Russian authorities ordered the closure from Thursday of Moscow’s award-winning Gulag History Museum, dedicated to the victims of Soviet-era repression.

The closure was officially put down to alleged violations of fire safety regulations, but comes amid an intense campaign being waged by the Kremlin against independent civil society and those who question the state’s interpretation of history.

“The decision to temporarily suspend the activities of the State Gulag Museum was taken for safety reasons,” the Moscow city culture department told AFP on Thursday.

The museum removed content from its website, replacing it with an announcement of the “temporary” closure.

They declined to comment further when contacted by AFP on Thursday.

Established in 2001, the central Moscow museum brings together official state documents with family photographs and objects from gulag victims.

Moscow authorities said 46,000 people visited in the first nine months of the year.

The gulag was a vast network of prison labour camps set up in the Soviet Union.

Millions of alleged traitors and enemies of the state were sent there, many to their deaths, in what historians recognise as a period of massive political repression.

The Council of Europe awarded the site its Museum Prize in 2021, saying it worked to “expose history and activate memory, with the goal of strengthening the resilience of civil society and its resistance to political repression and violation of human rights today and in the future.”



– ‘Great loss’ –



Outside the museum on Thursday, worker Mikhail, who declined to give his last name, lamented its possible closure.

“It’s a strong museum, very impressive. It’s disappointing that this happened. It’s a loss, a great loss if, God forbid, it’s permanent,” he told AFP.

“We need people to see it, to understand, to know that it must not be repeated.”

But Moscovite Yulia, a musician in her 50s who also declined to give her last name, welcomed the closure.

“I’m against such establishments, I’m not sad,” she told AFP while walking her dog in a nearby park.

“I’m a Stalinist… people die in every era, right now as well. We can’t make monuments for every era.”

Through his 24 years in power, President Vladimir Putin has sought to revise Russia’s historical narrative and its relationship with the Soviet Union.

While occasionally condemning the vast repression under Joseph Stalin in the 1930s, Putin more often hails him as a great wartime leader.

School textbooks pay little attention to the millions of victims of the Great Terror, seen as inconvenient in the promotion of the Soviet Union as a great power that defeated Nazi Germany.

Authorities have increasingly targeted individuals and groups who push back against this approach — a campaign that has stepped up amid the Ukraine offensive.

In 2021, authorities ordered the liquidation of Memorial, the Nobel Prize-winning NGO that records victims of both Soviet repression and allegations of human rights violations by the current regime.

Last month the Gulag History Museum staged a “Return of the Names” event — when individuals read out the names of people killed during Soviet terror.

Iran activist kills himself after demanding release of prisoners


By AFP
November 14, 2024

ctress Bridget Moynahan (L) and activist Kianoosh Sanjari at an Amnesty International Concert in New York - Copyright AFP/File VASILY MAXIMOV

Human rights campaigners on Thursday paid tribute to an Iranian activist who killed himself hours after warning he would do so if four inmates seen to be political prisoners were not freed.

Kianoosh Sanjari, an opponent of the Islamic republic’s clerical authorities, warned in a message on X late Wednesday that he would commit suicide if the release of the two men and two women did not take place.

He then took his own life, according to multiple rights campaigners and organisations.

The formal announcement of his death, which is swiftly published by families in Iran when a relative dies, was also widely shared on social media.

Sanjari had demanded the release of veteran campaigner Fatemeh Sepehri, Nasreen Shakarami, the mother of a teenager killed during 2022 protests, rapper Tomaj Salehi and civil rights activist Arsham Rezaei.

“If they are not released from prison by 7:00 pm today, Wednesday, and the news of their release is not published on the judiciary news site, I will end my life in protest against the dictatorship of (supreme leader Ayatollah Ali) Khamenei and his accomplices,” he said.

He later added: “No one should be imprisoned for expressing their opinions. Protest is the right of every Iranian citizen.

“My life will end after this tweet but let’s not forget that we die and die for the love of life, not death,” he added.

It was not immediately clear how he killed himself. Sanjari had late Wednesday posted an image that appeared to have been taken looking down on the street from the upper floor of a Tehran tower block.

– ‘Islamic Republic killed him’ –

Figures from across the opposition spectrum expressed grief, saying the suicide was indicative of the climate in the Islamic republic due to the crackdown that followed the 2022-2023 nationwide protests which shook the authorities.

Activists said Senjari had been repeatedly arrested and summoned in Iran since returning to take care of his elderly mother in 2015 after a stint working in the US for Voice of America.

“His death is a warning to all of us of how heavy the price of silence and indifference can be,” said campaigner Arash Sadeghi, who endured a lengthy spell in jail during the protests.

Atena Daemi, a labour activist released from jail in 2022, wrote on X that the “Islamic Republic had killed him bit by bit…. the Islamic republic is responsible for his death.”

The US-based son of the ousted shah, Reza Pahlavi, said: “our fight is for life against the regime of death and execution.”

British actor of Iranian origin Nazanin Boniadi said the chorus of tributes was in stark contrast to the arguments that often mark exchanges in Iranian opposition circles.

“A unity that should exist in life, not just in death. We have one common enemy: the Islamic republic regime. Let’s behave accordingly,” she said.

 

Who are We to Accuse Iran of “Malign Influence”?

US & UK have never behaved honourably in the Middle East

by Stuart Littlewood / October 12th, 2024

“I said it loud and clear — and meant it — that I support Zionism without qualification,” Keir Starmer told Jewish News.

So our brand-new prime minister has refused to rule out UK military involvement in any Israeli response to Iran’s recent missile attack, condemning what he calls Iran’s “malign role” in the Middle East.

And he refused to say whether MPs would get a vote beforehand on any military action. “We support Israel’s right to defend herself against Iran’s aggression, in line with international law, because let’s be very clear, this was not a defensive action by Iran, it was an act of aggression and a major escalation in response to the death of a terrorist leader.

“It exposes, once again, Iran’s malign role in the region: they helped equip Hamas for the seventh of October attacks, they armed Hezbollah, who launched a year-long barrage of rockets on northern Israel, forcing 60,000 Israelis to flee their homes, and they support the Houthis, who mount direct attacks on Israel and continue to attack international shipping.”

Of course, Starmer didn’t mention the many attacks Israel had made on Lebanon and Iran over the years or explain why Hamas and Hezbollah came into being.

Be honest: who exactly are the “malign” influences in the Middle East?

Just as Britain and America would like everyone to believe that the Israel-Palestine conflict began on October 7 last year, when it had been going on since 1948 (and before), they’d like us to believe that hostilities with Iran began with the 1979 Islamic Revolution. But you have to go back over 70 years to find the root cause in America’s case, while Iranians have endured a whole century of British exploitation and bullying. The US-UK-Israel Axis don’t want this important slice of history to become part of public discourse. Here’s why.

In 1901 William Knox D’Arcy, a Devon man, obtained from the Mozaffar al-Din Shah Qajar a 60-year oil concession to three-quarters of Persia. The Persian government would receive 16% of the oil company’s annual profits, a rotten deal as they would soon realize.

D’Arcy, with financial support from Glasgow-based Burmah Oil, eventually found oil in commercial quantities in 1908.  The Anglo-Persian Oil Company was formed and in 1911 completed a pipeline from the oilfield to its new refinery at Abadan.

Just before the outbreak of World War 1 Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, wanted to convert the British fleet from coal. To secure a reliable oil source the British Government took a major shareholding in Anglo-Persian.

In the 1920s and 1930s, the company profited hugely from paying the Persians a miserly 16% and refusing to renegotiate terms. An angry Persia eventually canceled the D’Arcy agreement and the matter went to the Court of International Justice in The Hague. A new agreement in 1933 provided Anglo-Persian with a fresh 60-year concession but on a smaller area. The terms were an improvement but still didn’t amount to a square deal.

In 1935 Persia became known internationally by its other name, Iran, and the company changed to Anglo-Iranian Oil. By 1950 Abadan was the biggest oil refinery in the world and the British government, with its 51% holding, had affectively colonized part of southern Iran.

Iran’s tiny share of the profits had long soured relations and so did the company’s treatment of its oil workers. 6,000 went on strike in 1946 and the dispute was brutally put down with 200 dead or injured. In 1951, while Aramco was sharing profits with the Saudis on a 50/50 basis, Anglo-Iranian handed Iran a miserable 17.5%.

Hardly surprising, then, that Iran wanted economic and political independence. Calls for nationalizing its oil could no longer be ignored. In March 1951 the Majlis and Senate voted to nationalize Anglo-Iranian, which had controlled Iran’s oil industry since 1913 under terms frankly unfavorable to the host country.

Social reformer Dr. Mohammad Mossadeq was named prime minister by a 79 to 12 majority and promptly carried out his government’s wishes, canceling Anglo-Iranian’s oil concession and expropriating its assets. His explanation was perfectly reasonable: “Our long years of negotiations with foreign countries… have yielded no results thus far. With the oil revenues, we could meet our entire budget and combat poverty, disease, and backwardness among our people.

“Another important consideration is that by the elimination of the power of the British company, we would also eliminate corruption and intrigue, by means of which the internal affairs of our country have been influenced…. Iran will have achieved its economic and political independence.” (M. Fateh, Panjah Sal-e Naft-e Iran, p. 525)

For his impudence he would be removed in a coup by MI5 and the CIA, imprisoned for 3 years then put under house arrest until his death. Britain, determined to bring about regime change, orchestrated a worldwide boycott of Iranian oil, froze Iran’s sterling assets and threatened legal action against anyone purchasing oil produced in the formerly British-controlled refineries. The Iranian economy was soon in ruins… All sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

America was reluctant at first to join Britain’s destructive game but Churchill (prime minister at the time) let it be known that Mossadeq was turning communist and pushing Iran into the arms of Russia just when Cold War anxiety was high. That was enough to bring America’s new president, Eisenhower, onboard and plotting with Britain to bring Mossadeq down.

So began a nasty game of provocation, mayhem and deception. Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, in exile, signed two decrees, one dismissing Mossadeq and the other nominating the CIA’s choice, General Fazlollah Zahedi, as prime minister. These decrees were written as dictated by the CIA. In August 1953, when it was judged safe for him to do so, the Shah returned to take over.

Mossadeq was arrested, tried, and convicted of treason by the Shah’s military court. He remarked: “My greatest sin is that I nationalized Iran’s oil industry and discarded the system of political and economic exploitation by the world’s greatest empire… I am well aware that my fate must serve as an example in the future throughout the Middle East in breaking the chains of slavery and servitude to colonial interests.”

His supporters were rounded up, imprisoned, tortured or executed. Zahedi’s new government reached an agreement with foreign oil companies to form a consortium to restore the flow of Iranian oil, awarding the US and Great Britain the lion’s share, with 40% going to Anglo-Iranian.

The consortium agreed to split profits on a 50-50 basis with Iran but refused to open its books to Iranian auditors or allow Iranians to sit on the board.

The US massively funded the Shah’s government, including his army and his hated secret police force, SAVAK. Anglo-Iranian changed its name to British Petroleum in 1954. Mossadeq died in 1967.

The CIA-engineered coup that toppled Mossadeq, reinstated the Shah and let the American oil companies in, was the final straw for the Iranians. The British-American conspiracy inevitably backfired 25 years later with the Islamic Revolution of 1978-9, the humiliating 444-day hostage crisis in the American embassy and a tragically botched rescue mission.

If Britain and America had played fair and allowed the Iranians to determine their own future instead of using economic terrorism to bring the country to its knees Iran might today be “the only democracy in the Middle East”, a title falsely claimed by Israel which is actually a repulsive ethnocracy. So never mention the M-word: MOSSADEQ.

But Britain seems incapable of playing fair. In 2022, when Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian, was freed after five years in a Tehran prison it transpired that the UK had owed around £400m to the Iranian government arising from the non-delivery of Chieftain battle tanks ordered by the Shah of Iran before his overthrow in 1979. Iran had been pursuing the debt for over four decades. In 2009 an international court in the Netherlands ordered Britain to repay the money. Iranian authorities said Nazanin would be released when the UK did so, but she suffered those years of incarceration, missing her children and husband back in the UK, while the British government took its own sweet time before finally paying up.

Smoldering resentment for more than 70 years

During the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88) the US, and eventually Britain, leaned strongly towards Saddam and the alliance enabled Saddam to more easily acquire or develop forbidden chemical and biological weapons. At least 100,000 Iranians fell victim to them.

This is how John King, writing in 2003, summed it up. “The United States used methods both legal and illegal to help build Saddam’s army into the most powerful army in the Mideast outside of Israel. The US supplied chemical and biological agents and technology to Iraq when it knew Iraq was using chemical weapons against the Iranians. The US supplied the materials and technology for these weapons of mass destruction to Iraq at a time when it was known that Saddam was using this technology to kill his Kurdish citizens.

“The United States supplied intelligence and battle planning information to Iraq when those battle plans included the use of cyanide, mustard gas and nerve agents. The United States blocked the UN censure of Iraq’s use of chemical weapons. The United States did not act alone in this effort. The Soviet Union was the largest weapons supplier, but England, France, and Germany were also involved in the shipment of arms and technology.”

As it happens the company I worked for at that time supplied the Iranian government with electronic components for military equipment. We were just mulling an invitation to set up a factory in Tehran when the UK Government announced it was revoking all export licences to Iran. Britain had decided to back Saddam. Hundreds of British companies were forced to abandon the Iranians at a critical moment.

Betraying Iran and throwing our weight behind Saddam went well, didn’t it? Saddam was overthrown in April 2003 following the US/UK-led invasion of Iraq, and hanged in messy circumstances after a dodgy trial in 2006. The dirty work was left to the Provisional Iraqi Government. At the end of the day, we couldn’t even ensure that Saddam was dealt with fairly. “The trial and execution of Saddam Hussein were tragically missed opportunities to demonstrate that justice can be done, even in the case of one of the greatest crooks of our time”, said the UN Human Rights Council’s expert on extrajudicial executions.

Philip Alston, a law professor at New York University, pointed to three major flaws leading to Saddam’s execution. “The first was that his trial was marred by serious irregularities denying him a fair hearing and these have been documented very clearly. Second, the Iraqi Government engaged in an unseemly and evidently politically motivated effort to expedite the execution by denying time for a meaningful appeal and by closing off every avenue to review the punishment. Finally, the humiliating manner in which the execution was carried out clearly violated human rights law.”

Alston acknowledged that “there is an understandable inclination to exact revenge in such cases” but warned that “to permit such instincts to prevail only sends the message that the rule of law continues to be mocked in Iraq, as it was in Saddam’s own time”.

So now we’re playing dirty again, supporting an undemocratic state, Israel, which is run by genocidal maniacs and has for 76 years defied international law and waged a war of massacre, terror and dispossession against the native Palestinians. And we’re even protecting it in its lethal quarrel with Iran.

It took President Truman only 11 minutes to accept and extend full diplomatic relations to Israel when Zionist entity declared statehood in 1948 despite the fact that it was still committing massacres and other terrorist atrocities. Israel’s evil ambitions and horrendous tactics were well known and documented right from the start but eagerly backed and facilitated by the US and UK. In the UK’s case betrayal of the Palestinians began in 1915 thanks to Zionist influence. Even Edwin Montagu, the only Jew in the British Cabinet at that time, described Zionism as “a mischievous political creed, untenable by any patriotic citizen of the United Kingdom”. A century later it is quite evident that Zionism has been the ultimate “malign influence” in the Middle East.

Sadly, the Zionist regime’s unspeakable cruelty and inhumanity against unarmed women and children in Gaza and the West Bank — bad enough in the decades before October 2023 but now showing the Israelis as the repulsive criminals they’ve always been — still isn’t enough to end US-UK adoration for it.FacebooTwitteRedditEmail

Stuart Littlewood, after working on jet fighters in the RAF, became an industrial marketeer in oil, electronics and manufacturing, and with innovation and product development consultancies. He also served as a Cambridgeshire county councillor and a member of the Police Authority. He is an Associate of the Royal Photographic Society and has produced two photo-documentary books including Radio Free Palestine (with foreword by Jeff Halper). Now retired, he campaigns on various issues, especially the Palestinians' struggle for freedom. Read other articles by Stuart, or visit Stuart's website.