I had meant to devote this weekly column to a topic regarding the tourism industry since Vietnam has just announced that its measure enabling tourists from some European countries to remain in the country for 45 days without a visa is being extended until 2028. I would no doubt have wondered for the umpteenth time whether it was pertinent for Cambodia to continue charging for tourist visas while its big neighbors, with tourism offer much more diversified and attractive for long stays, use visas being free of charge as an additional seduction strategy.     

I would probably have written that, by doing so, these neighboring countries had a smarter tourism-business approach in that they had grasped that the most important is not to make visitors pay before they cross the border but to make them spend as much money as possible while in the country. And so on, as I’m not short of arguments.

But a photo published in the media has turned me from this subject, making it immediately brutally futile.

In that photo, there is this: a pair of flip-flops on which is a smartphone still on and a pair of glasses.  

This is all that is left of the life of a young man who had just jumped into the void off the Chroy Changvar Bridge in Phnom Penh. This was on March 11.

In December 2024, a 13-year-old child had jumped off the same bridge following her parents reproaching her for not working hard enough at school.  

Shortly before, two young men from the provinces who had not been able to find jobs in Phnom Penh had jumped over the railing, leaving behind a brief note of apology addressed to their family.

In the media, they talk of the “suicide hotspot” that this bridge has become. Morbid fascination. 

As if this bridge had, like a spider trapping its preys in its web, the deadly power to draw in young people in distress with tormented and clouded minds.  

And yet, the suicide of young people is not preordained. It’s like a fit of madness, which occurs in a moment of great distress, of great solitude. Due to a sentimental disappointment, a professional failure, a family dispute. A few moments are enough for death seeming the only possible outcome. But also for life to resume its rightful course.     

First, one should take away Chroy Changvar Bridge’s poisonous power over young minds in distress.

Can't protective nets be installed as was done at the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, one of the places where there were the most suicides in the world. Ten years ago, the authorities decided to take measures by approving the installation of protective nets. While they were being set up, the number of suicides had considerably decreased. In 2023, only 14 persons jumped from the bridge, compared to 30 in 2022. The persons who had died had jumped from the places where the nets were not yet totally set up. 

Of course, young desperate people would still have many other ways to end their lives. But setting up such nets, beside their dissuasive effect, would serve as a message saying that society is concerned about the suicide of young people, does not accept it, while right now, it merely counts, with fatalism, its children who fall off the railing. 

And, the same way hotlines have been set up to prevent child abuse, couldn’t a hotline be put in place for these young people in distress in order to help them leave behind them death that smiles at them.

It is often said that when an old man dies, it is a library that disappears.

Let’s add a corollary: When a young person commits suicide, it is a library that will never see the light of day.