The University of Hong Kong's Centre for Suicide Research and Prevention reported last month that the suicide rate now stands at 13.6 per 100,000 people, and predicted a rise in 2012.
While most suicides are associated with personal tragedy or despair and involve individuals acting alone, there are, inevitably, cases of assisted suicide, although these rarely come to light.
Although suicide itself was decriminalised in 1967, a person who assists another's suicide is guilty of an offence, punishable with 14 years' imprisonment. A prosecution, however, requires the consent of the secretary for justice, who has not disclosed the criteria he applies to cases.
In England and Wales, assisted suicide is also an offence, and a prosecution must be approved by the director of public prosecutions, who has recently explained his approach to prosecutions.
To circumvent English law, terminally ill people sometimes travel abroad to places where it is not illegal for doctors to end the life of those who have no hope of recovery and wish to die. In 2009, for example, published figures indicate that 27 Britons ended their lives at the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland. However, the family and friends of victims had, until recently, little idea if they faced prosecution for providing assistance.
In 2009, Debbie Purdy, a multiple sclerosis sufferer, successfully argued in the House of Lords that, by not disclosing whether her husband would be prosecuted if he accompanied her to the Dignitas clinic, prosecutors were breaching her human rights. The court concluded that far greater clarity was necessary in relation to prosecution policy. It said that though assisted suicide cases were few and that decisions were sensitive to the particular facts, these were not reasons to excuse the director of public prosecutions from his obligation to clarify the factors he saw as relevant for and against prosecution.
