At around 9:30 pm on the night of March 12, a 21-year-old factory worker leaped from Phnom Penh’s Cambodian-Japanese Friendship Bridge. Fortunately, she was saved by the small police force that oversees the bridge.
The officers found a local fisherman with a small wooden boat, and together they retrieved the woman from the river before sending her to Calmette Hospital in an ambulance.
It was the 17th suicide attempt from the bridge since January, police said.
Stationed in a wooden office beneath the bridge, Un Phal, chief of administration for Point III Protection Police, and his force of 44 officers have become expert in watching for jumpers plunging into the muddy waters of the Tonle Sap river.
“We could save her in time,” Un Phal recalled of the most recent suicide attempt. “She was in a lot of pain. She cried.”
Police have little time to ask the jumpers their identities, or their reasons for jumping, because they need to be hospitalized quickly.
“We try to find out about their relatives,” Un Phal said. “They rarely tell us why they tried to commit suicide, and we have little time to ask.”
The woman who leapt on March 12 was originally from Svay Rieng province’s Svay Teap district, and according to her friends was distraught over a love affair, he said.
Of the 17 people known to have attempted suicide so far this year, all have been saved, Un Phal said.
“Most of the cases we can save them. In some cases, we can’t help them because we don’t know when they jump,” he said.
Most of the jumpers are in their early 20s, and originally come from the provinces rather than Phnom Penh.
Although there are nearly 50 officials assigned to the bridge to maintain a 24-hour watch in shifts, they do not own a single boat. When they spot someone jumping, they have to locate a local fisherman and pay him $1.25 to try to retrieve them, said Chea Chan, the police unit chief.
“Nobody gives us a boat. We have to hire the fishermen’s boat. In return, we have to buy balm and pay for a motorbike taxi to send them home,” Chea Chan said.
“We don’t know what to do. We just help them because we see [it happening] with our eyes. We spend about $5 or more on each case.”
Chea Chan said jumpers have learned about the bridge from frequent newspaper articles about other suicide attempts. “They have to choose a good place. Japan made us a good bridge,” he said.
Most of the suicide cases result from family problems, broken hearts, miserable standards of living and chronic diseases, he added. “A husband has another girl. Husband beats wife. Parents blame children because they play around. Most of the cases are domestic.”
Sary Omoeu, 56, an ethnic Cham fisherman working beneath the bridge, said he has retrieved 58 people who have jumped from the bridge over the last seven years. “When I see people jumping from the bridge and floating in the water, I rush in with my boat to save them,” he said.
“I have never been paid by police. They don’t have money. In the 58 times saving, I got $2.50 twice from victims’ families. Sometime they give me one or two liters of gasoline,” he said.
“I don’t want anything from them. Most of the jumpers are girls having crisis in love affairs or boys with HIV. I don’t touch their belongings.”
Medical officials admit that there are few resources to help people who are suicidal, and there are only a handful of trained psychiatrists working in Cambodia.
Oung Chanthol, president of Cambodian Women Crisis Center, said jumpers from the bridge are sometimes referred to her organization for care. Before attempting suicide, “the victims go to the authorities but the authorities don’t help them because they think it is a family affair,” Oung Chanthol said.
“In some cases, the family members don’t help much in the disputes between husbands and wives, so the women are hopeless,” she said.
