7/3/2023 3:22 pm (act. 7/3/2023 3:30 pm)
Protest in front of the Ministry of Education in Tehran ©APA/AFP
After the mysterious mass poisoning of students in Iran, the Tehran government announced the first arrests. Arrests were made in five provinces based on “discoveries by the secret services”, Deputy Interior Minister Majid Mirahmadi said on state television on Tuesday. He did not provide any information about the identity of those arrested, the circumstances of their arrest and their alleged role in the poisoning.
Mass poisonings at girls’ schools in Iran have been reported repeatedly over the past three months. Authorities suspect an attempt to exclude girls from school. The background has not yet been clarified.
Meanwhile, teachers in several cities across Iran have taken to the streets in response to the recent wave of poisonings. Videos on social media showed protests in several Iranian provinces. At the meetings, relatives also accused the authorities of not taking sufficient measures against poisoning in girls’ schools. Photos and videos showed protests in the megacities of Tabriz and Mashhad, in Isfahan, Shiraz, on the Caspian Sea and in Kurdish regions.
Iran’s supreme spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, ordered “severe punishment” for the poisoning on Monday. Also on Monday, Iran’s judiciary chief Mohseni Ejei announced that people arrested in connection with the poisonings should be tried in court for “corruption in the land”, which would carry the death penalty.
According to the reformist newspaper Etemad, dozens of schoolgirls in the eastern city of Kuchan were again hospitalized on Monday after inhaling “unpleasant odors”. More than 700 similar cases were reported in the southwestern province of Khuzestan on Sunday.
According to a parliamentary inquiry into the poisoning wave, more than 5,000 schoolgirls in 25 of the country’s 31 provinces have been poisoned since the end of November.