Teachers protest over girls’ poisonings
Iran officials pressured as more report becoming ill
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – Iranian teachers protested Tuesday over suspected poisonings targeting schoolgirls, as a prominent lawmaker and an activist group put the number of those reporting symptoms in the thousands across hundreds of schools.
The new figures dramatically escalate the ongoing crisis now gripping the highest levels of Iran’s theocracy, already under pressure after months of demonstrations following the death of Mahsa Amini in September.
Meanwhile, prosecutors started filing criminal charges against journalists, activists and others over their comments on the stillunsolved incidents that began in November. Officials also again announced arrests of unnamed suspects over the occurrences, with little detail, after withdrawing similar earlier claims.
These incidents at schools, with new ones reported Tuesday, threaten to again stoke public anger as parents fear for the safety of their children. It remains unclear who may be behind the suspected attacks and what chemicals – if any – have been used.
“The poisonings are further forcing a domestic conversation along Iran’s deep social divides between religious conservative Iranians and more secular liberal Iranians,” riskintelligence firm the RANE Network said in an analysis. “If the poisonings continue, they will become another trigger of disruptive unrest against the government, regardless of whether the government is actually behind them or not.”
Angry over what they described as the government’s slow response, teachers demonstrated in a number of Iranian cities, including Ahvaz, Isfahan, Karaj, Mashhad, Rasht, Sanandaj, Saqqez and Shiraz, online videos purported to show.
Other videos showed riot police in the streets, with some police officers surrounding those demonstrating in Isfahan. Activists identifying themselves as belonging to Iran’s Coordinating Council of Teachers Syndicates said police used pepper spray, water cannons and force to disperse protesters in Mashhad, Rasht and Saqqez.
Iranian state media made no mention of Tuesday’s demonstrations or of security forces dispersing demonstrators. Teachers have been targeted by security forces and faced arrests for months over protesting in support of their long-standing demands for salary increases amid the collapse of Iran’s currency, the rial.
Protesters and others have raised the possibility that religious extremists may be targeting schoolgirls to stop them from being educated. Attacks on women have happened in the past in Iran, most recently with a wave of acid attacks in 2014 around Isfahan, at the time believed to have been carried out by hard-liners targeting women for how they dressed. But even in the chaos surrounding the Islamic Revolution, no one targeted schoolgirls for attending class.