TAIPEI: Suicide constituted about 16 per cent of deaths of Republic of China soldiers who died during their service from 2000 to 2012.

The issue of suicide in the Republic of China armed forces has been in the spotlight recently in Taiwan as several suicides were reported in the military over the past few months.

The most recent case occurred on June 12 when a colonel surnamed Tsai hung herself at her home.

Upon learning the news of her suicide, the Ministry of National Defence (MND) originally claimed that she was emotionally unstable following the passing of her grandmother earlier this year.

However, Tsai’s family members later disclosed that Tsai had been complaining for a long time that she was under extreme stress due to tremendous pressure from her work duties.

Despite her complaints and the military’s efforts to reassign her work, family members have argued that the issue was not properly tackled, leaving her with no choice but to end her life.

Facing lawmakers’ questions, Deputy Defence Minister Po Hung-hui was forced to confess during a legislative session that the military did know about Tsai’s condition for a while and had asked mental health counsellors to talk with her in the hope of solving the issue.

The counselling sessions, however, were apparently not working, Po said. Po apologised for the incident, while pledging to form an investigative committee to probe into the cause of Tsai’s death.

Tsai’s suicide was hardly an isolated incident. Tsai is the fifth case of suicide/attempted suicide that involved military personnel since April.

On May 29, an Air Force Master Chief surnamed Chen of 455th Tactical Fighter Wing was found dead at a creek in Chiayi county near his base. He reportedly committed suicide also due to huge pressure from work, only one year before his scheduled retirement.

Before that on April, a lieutenant platoon leader with the Kaohsiung City-based 99th Marine Brigade, surnamed Wu, was found death at her own barracks, after allegedly hanging herself by tying her field-camouflage uniform into knots.

Wu’s family and friends said she was under a lot of stress and had reportedly being verbally bullied by her colleagues before her death. She was originally planning to get married at the end of the year.

The series of suicide cases have led lawmakers to look into the matter more closely.

Loopholes in military counselling system?

Citing statistics, DPP legislator Wang Ting-yu said a total of 2,088 active ROC soldiers died during their service from 2000 to 2012. Among them 322 killed themselves, which constituted about 16 per cent of total deaths.

Wang questioned whether these suicides were due to individual issues, or if they represent major negligence on the part of the Armed Forces’ mental-health counselling system.

Asked to comment on the suicide issue, Hsu Yen-pu, Deputy Chief of the General Staff for Personnel under the defence ministry, previously told The China Post that the suicide rate within Taiwan’s Armed Forces is in fact only one-tenth of the nation’s overall suicide rate.

He noted that people tend to scrutinise the military over suicide because they have always put more attention on military personnel than on civilians.

Regarding the issue of counselling within the military, Po admitted during last Monday’s session that the military has much room for improvement in terms of offering psychological assistance to military personnel.

According to Po, nearly 50,000 soldiers have checked into hospitals over mental health counselling in the past decade.

But he insisted that under the military’s three-tier mental-health counselling service system, most of the soldiers who seek professional counselling are able to overcome their problems.

Chen Pi-e, founder of the Association for the Promotion of Human Rights in the Military has a different view on the issue.

Chen, whose association aims to push the military on the improvement of human rights conditions, said in her blog that the military’s existing mental-health counselling system does not function well enough at all.

“Counsellors are supposed to be professionals but most of the military counsellors lack professional training,” she noted.

More importantly, Taiwan’s military does not have enough professional counsellors to meet the rising demands.

“Some counsellors need to undergo counselling themselves due to strong work pressure. How can those who need counselling themselves provide counselling?”

So what causes the growing pressure on soldiers?

Continuous downsizing adds burden to soldiers One of the main reasons could be the increasing duties military personnel face amid continuously dropping personnel numbers.

The Defence Ministry launched a series of downsizing programmes over the past decade, cutting the number of military personnel from 400,000 to 215,000.

A latest restructuring project, Yong Ku, was launched in 2015 and is scheduled to reduce the number further to below 200,000 by the end of 2019.

Many lawmakers have previously urged the ministry to reconsider the project since there are already serious problems facing troops.

During an inspection tour of the Military Police’s 239th Battalion in Taipei Dazhi on June 7, President Tsai Ing-wen also recognised the problem, urging the ministry to resolve challenges resulting from staff shortages so that troops could focus on combat readiness instead of learning to perform other duties.

Tsai said she has visited numerous troops since taking office on May 20 and was told by the units’ officials that insufficient manpower was the most pressing issue facing them daily.

Tsai said she was told that with continuous reduction of troop numbers, soldiers are now required to multitask. She said this placed a large burden and high pressure on personnel, who must complete new tasks in addition to their regular duties and efforts to maintain combat readiness.

In the wake of the suicides, Defence Minister Feng Shih-kuan pledged that the military needs to streamline its management system so that military personnel will work more efficiently and no one needs to work overtime.

He also pledged to conduct review on the working load of grass-roots units by year-end and make possible adjustment to those units to provide a healthier workplace within the military.

The China Post / Taiwan

Published in Dawn, June 29th, 2016