Girls Being Poisoned To Shut Down Schools? Iran Launches Investigation Into Sensational Allegations

In yet another episode of suspected poisoning of school-going girls in troubled Iran, dozens of girls were hospitalised on Tuesday (28 February) after they complained of respiratory distress.

As per various reports, around 700 such cases involving schoolgirls have been reported in Iran since the last week of November. These cases have mainly emerged from the religious city of Qom, which is south of capital Tehran.

Qom is home to prominent Shia Muslim religious places and much of the leadership of the Islamic Republic comes from there, BBC reported.

On Tuesday, dozens of girls from Khayyam Girls’ School in the city of Pardis, Tehran province, reported of similar poisoning. 

The first such case was reported on 30 November when 18 girls from Nour Technical School were taken to hospital after suspected poisoning. They complained of trouble in respiration and said that they smelled tangerine or rotten fish before falling ill.

Several similar episodes have since been reported in and near Qom. No girls have died of the suspected poisoning, but have complained of respiratory problems, dizziness, fatigue and nausea.

Last week, around 200 girls complained of similar problems in the city of Borujerd in Lorestan.

News agency AFP reported that a government official on Sunday (26 February), that is two days before the latest episode, said that the attacks were believed to be a deliberate attempt to force the closure of girls’ schools.

The official, Deputy Health Minister Younis Panahi, however, stated that chemicals the girls had inhaled “are not military grade” and appealed to people to calm down.

BBC reported that the prosecutor general last week announced a criminal investigation into the episodes. He said that the available information indicated “possibility of criminal and premeditated acts”.

In the first week of February, hundreds of people protested against these episodes at the governor’s office. A woman reportedly said, “This is a war…They are doing this in a girls’ high school in Qom to force us to sit at home. They want girls to stay at home”.

Iran continues to face internal turmoil as protests that erupted in September over the country’s religious police, continue to be staged. The protests began after death of a 22-year-old woman in police custody after she was taken to the police station by the religious police for not adhering to “proper hijab”.

Since the 1980s, Iran has a law requiring all women in public to wear a loose fitting cloak and a headscarf covering hair and neck over their dress. Violation of the law results in fine or jail time, and there is a special police task force to monitor that women follow the dress code. 

Protesters have decried the hold of clerics on the country’s government and policies. 

The episodes of poisoning are being seen by many as handiwork of religious extremists. “Has Boko Haram come to Iran?”, former Vice-Presdent Mohammad Ali Abtahi wrote on Instagram recently, referring to how the militant Islamist Boko Haram group in Nigeria terrorised families into stop sending their girls to school.