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Quiet Epidemic of Suicide Claims France’s Farmers
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By PAMÉLA ROUGERIE AUG. 20, 2017

Marie Le Guelvout at the farm in the Brittany region of France where her brother Jean-Pierre killed himself in December. Credit Pierre Terdjman for The New York Times

KERLÉGO, France — A dairy farmer, Jean-Pierre Le Guelvout, once kept 66 cows at a thriving estate in southern Brittany. But falling milk prices, accumulating debts, depression and worries about his health in middle age became too much to bear.

Just 46, Mr. Le Guelvout shot himself in the heart in a grove behind his house one cold December day last year. “It was a place that he loved, near the fields that he loved,” explained his sister Marie, who said she was “very close” to him but did not see his suicide coming.

The death of Ms. Le Guelvout’s brother was part of a quiet epidemic of suicide among French farmers with which stoical rural families, the authorities, public health officials and researchers are trying to grapple.

Farmers are particularly at risk, they all say, because of the nature of their work, which can be isolating, financially precarious and physically demanding.

For farmers who do not have children to help with the work and eventually take over, the burden is that much greater. Falling prices for milk and meat have also added to debts and stress in recent years.

Researchers and farming organizations agree that the problem has persisted for years, but while they have stepped up efforts to help farmers, the effectiveness of such measures and the toll from suicides remain difficult to quantify.

The most recent statistics, made public in 2016 by France’s public health institute, show that 985 farmers killed themselves from 2007 to 2011 — a suicide rate 22 percent higher than that of the general population.

Even that number of suicides, which increased over time, may be underestimated, say researchers, who add that they fear the problem is not going away, though they are still analyzing more recent data.

Jean-Pierre Le Guelvout’s property. In some ways, Mr. Le Guelvout was representative of the farmers who are most likely to kill themselves, according to public health statistics. They are often men ages 45 to 54, working in animal husbandry. Credit Pierre Terdjman for The New York Times

“The doctor establishing the death certificate can avoid mentioning suicide,” said Dr. Véronique Maeght-Lenormand, an occupational physician who runs the national suicide prevention plan for the Mutualité Sociale Agricole, a farmers’ association.

The reason? “Some insurance companies won’t allow compensations for spouses after a suicide,” she said. “There’s also the weight of our Judeo-Christian culture.”

Mr. Le Guelvout’s case came to light because he had previously achieved some fame as a participant in a popular television program, “L’Amour Est Dans le Pré” (“Love Is in the Field”), a sort of French version of “The Bachelor” that aimed to help farmers find companionship.

“He was very naïve,” Ms. Le Guelvout said. “He wanted a wife who worked outside the farm, and to become a father.”

But in some ways, he was representative of the farmers who are most likely to kill themselves, according to public health statistics. They are often men ages 45 to 54, working in animal husbandry.

“It is a time when you start having small health issues, when you think about the transfer of your farm,” Dr. Maeght-Lenormand said. “Farmers can start wondering why they’re doing all of this if no one is here to inherit it.”

But that is not the only force that pushes many to despair.

“There’s this financial pressure, this loan pressure,” said Nicolas Deffontaines, a researcher for Cesaer, a center that studies the economy and sociology of rural areas.

The debts, Mr. Deffontaines said, can lead farmers to deepen their investments, both personal and financial, as they immerse themselves in their work and take more loans to pay off previous ones. In doing so, they fuel their isolation and deepen the financial hole they are in, he said.

In recent years, those financial pressures have grown only more onerous. In 2015, the European Union ended quotas for dairy farmers that had been intended to avoid overproduction.

Cyril Belliard, 52, standing, described the toll farming had taken on him to a support group that had gathered at his home recently in western France. Credit Pierre Terdjman for The New York Times

Since then, there has been a glut of some products. Prices for milk have dropped below what farm associations say is needed to run and sustain a farm, let alone to make a profit.

The move to end quotas came on top of the bloc’s imposition of sanctions on Russia in response to its land grab in Ukraine, cutting off a once-robust export market for European dairy farmers in 2014.

Because many milk farms have shut, more cows have been sent for slaughter, in turn leading to lower prices for meat, even as the French lowered their consumption of meat products by 27 percent from 1998 to 2013, by some measures.

Seven years ago, the French government began addressing the rising suicide rate among farmers, and the agriculture minister at the time, Bruno Le Maire, elevated the issue to a national cause.

Since then, multiple steps have been taken in coordination with the Mutualité Sociale Agricole, the farm organization.

In 2014, a hotline called Agri’écoute (Listening to Farmers) was introduced to lend troubled farmers an ear. Multidisciplinary groups were created to help farmers sort out financial, medical, legal or family issues. In 2016, those units followed 1,352 cases across France.

Much of the focus was placed on farmers who were single or widowed, but building trust was not easy, said Dr. Maeght-Lenormand of the farmers’ association.

“For the farmers who pay regular social contributions to us, we’re still seen as the ones claiming money from them,” she said.

But farmers’ organizations, like Solidarité Paysans (Farmers’ Solidarity), have also stepped in.

Since Mr. Le Guelvout’s suicide, his brother André, 52, has taken over the farm. The family recently decided to stop milk production and to sell part of its livestock. Credit Pierre Terdjman for The New York Times

In 2015, Véronique Louazel, who works for the national bureau of the solidarity association, met with 27 struggling farmers for a study on the crisis the profession faces.

Farmers are often reluctant to talk about their difficulties, and it is hard for them to imagine doing anything else. “They have a strong culture of labor and effort, and they’re not used to complaining,” Ms. Louazel said.

But things are slowly changing, as more farmers speak up.

Cyril Belliard, 52, is among them. One recent day, he told his story to a small support group that had gathered in his tiny house in Vendée, a farming region in western France.

Mr. Belliard had been a farmer since 1996, he told them. But recently, he watched his goats dying day after day of a mysterious illness that neither he nor his veterinarian could figure out. Debts were piling up. Legal procedures began.

“I was living in a mobile home to avoid paying rent,” he recalled. “I moved into this small space of 35 square meters, where the whole family, my wife and children, would live, eat and sleep,” he added, referring to an area of about 375 square feet.

The father of three children, Mr. Belliard depended on charities for food and Solidarité Paysans for support. Finally, in March, he decided to sell his farm to a young farmer.

“I held on thanks to sports, which I’ve been practicing since I was 18,” he said, “and thanks to my kids, who were always my priority.”

Now, he is considering a career change. But leaving farm life is not easy and not always an option.

Since Mr. Le Guelvout’s suicide, his brother André, 52, has taken over the farm in Brittany, and his sister Marie worries about how he will handle all of the work that was previously shared. The family recently decided to stop milk production and to sell part of its livestock.

“André has been a farmer his whole life,” Ms. Le Guelvout said. “All that I want right now is for André to live peacefully on his farm, until he retires.”

A version of this article appears in print on August 21, 2017, on Page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: French Farms Endure a Rash Of Suicides. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe

FT: Sri Lanka counts high cost of war and peace

Sri Lanka counts high cost of war and peace 

President Sirisena is accused of backsliding on pledge to heal country’s damaged reputation 

In August this year, Jagath Jayasuriya, Sri Lanka’s ambassador to Brazil, left the country abruptly after encountering an unexpected legal challenge: a suit accusing him of war crimes. Mr Jayasuriya was one of the army commanders who in 2009 led a crushing victory against Tamil separatists in Sri Lanka’s north — ending one of Asia’s longest-running conflicts, but at the cost of an estimated 40,000 civilian deaths in the war’s bloody final months. 

In their suit filed in Brasília and Bogotá, Latin American activists accused Mr Jayasuriya, who was also ambassador to five other countries in the region, of involvement in alleged atrocities including shelling of hospitals, torture and summary executions. 

The move prompted a defiant response from the country’s president. “I will not allow anyone in the world to touch Jagath Jayasuriya or any other military chief or any war hero in this country,” Maithripala Sirisena said.  The incident is a sharp reminder of how the conflict still dogs Sri Lanka’s global reputation. 

But equally revealing was the reaction of Mr Sirisena.  Elected in 2015 when he defeated Mahinda Rajapaksa, a charismatic but divisive figure who had led Colombo’s uncompromising final campaign of the war, Mr Sirisena had promised a new era of reconciliation, including accountability for atrocities that had stained Sri Lanka’s international reputation. The result raised hopes that Sri Lanka would conduct the sort of credible process that would enable the country to put its bitter internal conflict firmly in the past. 

Instead, the defence he offered of Mr Jayasuriya is the latest in a series of signs that the new president is backtracking on his commitments and of the unwillingness of his government to prosecute the soldiers who allegedly broke the articles of the
Geneva Convention during the final months of the conflict.

2015 UN report that flagged apparent war crimes by the Sri Lankan military, the government has failed to outline a plan for a judicial investigation of the matter. In March, the UN Human Rights Council accepted Sri Lanka’s argument that it needed an additional two years to set up a probe. But Mr Sirisena’s vow to protect “war heroes” undermines hopes that a promised international process will ever go ahead, while the war-ravaged north remains economically far behind the rest of the country. 

As concern mounts over military violence against Myanmar’s  Rohingya minority, the handling of Sri Lanka’s war legacy will set a powerful precedent for other governments, says Dharsha Jegatheeswaran at the Adayaalam Centre for Policy Research in Jaffna, capital of the Tamil-majority Northern Province. “There’s been absolutely no accountability for what happened in the last phase of the war,” she says. “Sri Lanka has shown how it’s possible to hoodwink the international community, always asking for space and time — and now Myanmar is following their lead.” 

At Mullivaikkal beach, the silence is broken only by lapping waves and the murmured chatter of S Manialakan and his fellow fishermen, preparing to head out to sea. It is a stark contrast with the scene at the beach eight years ago, when it hosted the last stand of a rebel army that had fought the Sri Lankan state for more than two decades, seeking a homeland for the Tamil minority in the island’s north and east.  Herded into the area by what remained of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, thousands of civilians were allegedly killed by intense military shelling in the months leading up to the LTTE’s final surrender in May 2009. “Shells and cluster bombs were falling all around — it’s a miracle that I survived,” says Mr Manialakan, a few yards from a cross that the fishermen say marks the remains of a Christian family killed by a single blast.

Nine months after Mr Sirisena’s 2015 election, Sri Lanka backed a resolution of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva calling for a judicial process, with local and foreign judges and prosecutors, to assess the claimed human rights abuses towards the end of the war.  

UN investigators had cited evidence of “horrific” violations by LTTE and government forces, including the use of child soldiers by the Tamil rebels, and summary executions and indiscriminate shelling of civilian areas by the Sri Lankan army. But analysts say Mr Sirisena’s reluctance to go ahead with the investigation is a predictable reflection of his vulnerable political position.  With Sri Lanka in a $1.5bn International Monetary Fund loan programme since last year, the government is under pressure to prove its economic competence. Mr Sirisena’s coalition government also faces strong parliamentary opposition, with Mr Rajapaksa still a popular figure among the Sinhalese majority. Many lionise the former president for ending a war that his predecessors had struggled to contain, and which brought suicide bombings to Colombo. 

The issue of military prosecutions is “dynamite for the government”, says Jehan Perera, executive director of the National Peace Council of Sri Lanka. “No Sinhalese wants the military to be punished.” The government’s slow movement on the investigation earned a strong rebuke from Ben Emmerson, the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights, who told reporters in the capital in July that progress had ground “to a virtual halt”, and warned that the matter could be referred to the Security Council. 

Yet despite the continuing criticism from UN officials, Sri Lanka’s bilateral relations with foreign powers appear to be warming. The EU, which had removed the country’s preferential market access in 2010 over human rights concerns, reinstated it in May, while the US this year pledged $700m in aid to Sri Lanka. 

This friendly treatment follows an eastward shift in Colombo’s foreign policy over the past decade. 

China provides the backdrop for some of Sri Lanka’s improved international standing. Ostracised by western powers during the latter part of his rule, Mr Rajapaksa forged closer bonds with Beijing, which has been investing billions of dollars in the country’s infrastructure including an underused port at Hambantota on the island’s southern coast. One western diplomat in Colombo denies suggestions that the recent rapprochement reflects an effort to counterbalance Beijing’s influence. “This government seems to be moving in the right direction,” the diplomat says, citing a broad improvement in transparency and civil liberties under the new administration. “It’s about supporting a government that is trying to do the right things.” But others in Sri Lanka say the easing of foreign pressure reflects a broader disengagement by major powers that had previously been vocal in their criticism of human rights violations. 

 “If this government does nothing about the Geneva resolution, what the hell is going to happen to them internationally?” says Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, founder of Colombo’s Centre for Policy Alternatives. “The Americans are turning away; the Brits are mired in Brexit . . . There are no champions.”  

Clad in his usual white traditional dress, Mr Sirisena last month visited the LTTE’s old administrative capital of Kilinochchi to open an agricultural centre, promising to boost farmers’ livelihoods through debt relief and irrigation schemes. Even before the new government took office, Mr Rajapaksa had overseen a huge infrastructure investment scheme for the region, at a cost of more than $2bn. 

Yet official statistics bear grim testament to the economic devastation during the war, when most of the Northern Province was ruled for years by the LTTE in defiance of an embargo imposed by the national government.  According to the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, the province’s per capita gross domestic product was a third below the national average in 2015. Areas of the Eastern Province that were ruled by the LTTE also rank among the country’s poorest. This partly reflects the dramatic deindustrialisation of the north and east during the war — symbolised by the hulking Kankesanthurai Cement Factory, once the country’s largest, which has been slowly corroding since closing in 1990. 

The government this year unveiled the country’s most generous corporate tax incentives to attract investment to the Northern Province, where per capita manufacturing output was just $72 in 2014, compared with $1,262 in the Western Province where Colombo lies. Recommended China-backed port sparks Sri Lanka sovereignty fears Colombo secures $1.5bn IMF loan to avert crisis.

Sri Lanka leads ranking in FDI diversification But many in the region fear that no policy will be able to make up for its disastrous loss of human capital. The education system, once one of the strongest in Sri Lanka, was disrupted under the LTTE, which turned to forced conscription of teenagers as the war progressed, says Rajan Hoole of Jaffna-based University Teachers for Human Rights. “They stultified our political and intellectual life,” he says. Beyond those killed in the conflict, tens of thousands more — including many of the region’s most educated and prosperous people — emigrated to India or western nations. 

The Tamil diaspora was a crucial source of funding for the separatist movement, helping the LTTE to maintain an army equipped with field artillery, as well as a small air force and crude submarines. But since the end of the war, the flow of expatriate cash has slowed, says Ahilan Kadirgamar, a researcher in Jaffna. “People send funding for a war, but not for peace,” he says. 

 And the reintegration of the conflict region into the national economy has come with worrying side-effects, notes Indrajit Coomaraswamy, governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka. He points to the rise in consumer credit offered by branches of southern banks that have opened in Jaffna and other northern cities. “The biggest short-term problem is now indebtedness. Livelihoods have not been created in a commensurate way, so people have taken on debt but they have no means of servicing it,” he says. 

Harsha de Silva, a deputy minister and close aide to prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, rejects the idea that the government lacks commitment to postwar reconciliation. In July, he notes, the government established a new Office of Missing Persons — tasked with finding answers for the families of more than 16,000 people who remain unaccounted for since the end of the war. The state is accused of mass “disappearances” of suspected LTTE personnel. “We are genuinely attempting to converge on something that can be acceptable to all communities in this country,” he says, in his Colombo office overlooking a vast new Chinese container terminal. “As Sri Lankans, we must find a Sri Lankan solution to this problem.” 

The government has been inching towards a long-debated overhaul of the constitution, which could bring greater autonomy for the Northern Province. This prospect has been welcomed by the Tamil community, which accounts for about 11 per cent of Sri Lanka’s 21m population. But it marks yet another tricky task for the government, with Sinhalese hardliners warning the reform could re-energise Tamil separatism. 

In the Northern Province, however, the likes of Kalimuttu Selvaraja show little appetite for a renewed independence struggle. Now 39, he says he became a teenage LTTE fighter in 1996 after the arrest and torture of his father — embarking on a military career that ended three years later with the loss of his right leg in a shell blast. Having spent three years in internment camps after the war’s end, he relies on a $20 monthly disability allowance, and is hoping for further support from the government he once fought.  “All my life, I’ve been suffering from violence,” he says, seated outside his home in the coastal town of Mullaitivu. “Now we just want jobs to do.” 

On a hot afternoon in Jaffna, A Gunapalasingham unfolds a large map of the nearby district of Valikamam North, dominated by a sprawling mass of military-held land that covers more than 3,000 acres. Within that area lies Mr Gunapalasingham’s ancestral home, from which he has been exiled since fleeing an air raid in 1990 and which was later incorporated into the high-security military zone after the war. Now, he is campaigning for the army to scale down its presence in the area, leading what he says is a group of several thousand displaced families. As well as Colombo’s determination to pacify the region, the huge and lingering army presence in the north reflects the bloated scale of a military that surged in manpower during the war, with the government still reluctant to cull its numbers. 

Sri Lanka had 265,200 military personnel in 2015, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies: more than 10 times the number 30 years earlier. 

Brandishing photographs of Buddhist Sinhalese soldiers assisting Hindu Tamils in a religious festival, Northern Province governor Reginald Cooray argues that the army’s positive work in the region is often overlooked. Soldiers have been dispatched to work on projects such as road-building and mass electrification, says Mr Cooray. 

But Mr Gunapalasingham is more concerned with speeding up the troops’ departure. “They are actually doing their own farming on the people’s land,” he says. “People are buying vegetables for their curry from the army.”

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