BEIRUT: The death of Palestinian refugee dancer Hassan Rabeh, who was displaced from Syria, has devastated friends and family who attribute Rabeh’s “disturbed” mental state to the despair and trauma he suffered as a refugee.
Rabeh was only 25-years-old when he threw himself from a seventh floor balcony of an apartment in Hamra street in Beirut, Lebanon.
The young talented dancer was a member of the dance group “Sima,” who won the reality TV talent show “Arabs Got Talent” in 2013.
According to Rabeh’s friends, the troubled youngster committed suicide shortly after his last performance in Beirut.
Before leaving the world behind, Rabeh left a public suicide note on Facebook, where he called for five fundamental “downs”: Down with the Daesh Group, down with the Assad regime, down with Israel, down with all sects and parties.
While Rabeh is a famous face who has decided to commit suicide, a leading 2015 study by the United Nations Population Fund has found that 41 percent of Syrian refugee youth living in Lebanon have thought about committing suicide, while 17 percent of them have “thought a lot” about ending their lives and 24 percent have been “tempted” to when all doors were closed in front of them.
Rabeh had been a refugee twice over in his 25 years, displaced by war from his Palestinian homeland with his family as a child, and then pushed from his adopted home in Damascus.
For more than two years he had struggled to survive in exile in Beirut, sleeping where he could, making friends when he could, teaching and working with the Sima dance company, with whom he won the reality television show Arabs Got Talent in 2013.
Rabeh was only 25-years-old when he threw himself from a seventh floor balcony of an apartment in Hamra street in Beirut, Lebanon.
The young talented dancer was a member of the dance group “Sima,” who won the reality TV talent show “Arabs Got Talent” in 2013.
According to Rabeh’s friends, the troubled youngster committed suicide shortly after his last performance in Beirut.
Before leaving the world behind, Rabeh left a public suicide note on Facebook, where he called for five fundamental “downs”: Down with the Daesh Group, down with the Assad regime, down with Israel, down with all sects and parties.
While Rabeh is a famous face who has decided to commit suicide, a leading 2015 study by the United Nations Population Fund has found that 41 percent of Syrian refugee youth living in Lebanon have thought about committing suicide, while 17 percent of them have “thought a lot” about ending their lives and 24 percent have been “tempted” to when all doors were closed in front of them.
Rabeh had been a refugee twice over in his 25 years, displaced by war from his Palestinian homeland with his family as a child, and then pushed from his adopted home in Damascus.
For more than two years he had struggled to survive in exile in Beirut, sleeping where he could, making friends when he could, teaching and working with the Sima dance company, with whom he won the reality television show Arabs Got Talent in 2013.
