A new wave of protests is starting in Iran after hundreds of schoolgirls were recently reported to have been poisoned. The government said it is investigating the reports, and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei called the reported poisonings an “unforgivable crime.” However, in light of decades of oppression and misogyny from the authoritarian Iranian regime, parents are accusing the regime of bearing responsibility too.
As PJ Media’s Rick Moran reported on March 2, “Iranian officials are investigating reports of about 700 girls at schools in and around the holy city of Qom being poisoned by some kind of ‘toxic gas.’” There were not fatalities at that time, but panic was understandably spreading among parents. There was some speculation that the poisonings were the work of Islamic militants trying force girls out of school. Many schoolgirls have been very active in supporting the anti-regime protests that convulsed Iran. Schoolgirls took off their hijabs and even performed demonstrations targeted specifically at Khamenei, tearing up pictures of him and calling for his death, according to Reuters. Reuters also reported that the apparent poisonings affected “30 schools in at least 10 of Iran’s 31 provinces on Saturday.”
Parents gathered for a protest about the “illness” affecting the schoolgirls at an Education Ministry building in western Tehran Saturday, and the gathering turned into an “anti-government demonstration.” Demonstrations over the poisonings also reportedly occurred in two other areas of Tehran and other cities including Isfahan and Rasht, according to Reuters. Protestors compared Iran’s security forces, including the infamous Revolutionary Guards, to the Islamic State. Iran’s government is a major state sponsor of terrorism and exercises tyrannical rule over its own country.
Related: Iran Investigating the Poisoning of Hundreds of Schoolgirls
The parents’ anger is not unreasonable in light of how atrociously women have been maltreated in Iran for decades, particularly since the recent protests began, sparked by Iran’s morality police arresting and possibly killing a woman for supposedly not wearing the required hijab properly in public. Both women and their male allies are abused by Iran’s various police and security forces.
Indeed, the Guardian published an article on Feb. 6, “‘They used our hijabs to gag us’: Iran protesters tell of rapes, beatings and torture by police,” which contains detailed horror stories of police beatings, brutal rapes, and torture of Iranian protestors. The government-sanctioned crimes were committed against both men and women, but particluarly women. The Guardian reported that over 500 people, including 70 children, had been killed by Iranian security forces between the time the protests began in late 2022 and the start of February.
It’s not surprising, therefore, that parents and protestors would be blaming the Iranian government for the poisonings, even if the government is not involved.
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