After the poisoning of schoolgirls, the Iranian protests sprout again on 1 ex-miss, 1 Swiss passport and 200-year-old wine – film theft in Spain

The Iranian theocracy faces the most difficult challenge since its existence after the 1979 revolution. Since September, the Iranian people have taken to the streets to rise up against the regime and demand more freedom. The straw that broke the camel’s back was the violent death of Kurd Jina Mahsa Amini.

So now religious extremists would poison girls. These new allegations threaten to spark public anger as teachers and parents fear for the safety of their charges and their children.

On Tuesday, Iranian teachers protested in several cities against alleged poisoning attacks on hundreds of schoolgirls. And while security forces dispersed the protests with water cannons and tear gas, prosecutors have launched criminal charges against people who have spoken out about the still unsolved incidents.

The poisoning

On March 1, Tehran’s reformist newspaper Etemad reported that suspected cases of poisoning had been reported in at least 127 schools in Iran. Explosive: Nearly every school that reported an incident was an all-girls school. The first cases were reported in November.

Activists and Iranian media had previously reported that more than 1,000 schoolgirls were sick and at least 400 had to be hospitalised.

It remains unclear who was behind the alleged attacks and what chemicals, if any, were used.

However, protesters, media workers and activists have raised the possibility that religious extremists have targeted schoolgirls to keep them from attending school. It is not yet clear whether the attacks were orchestrated by the regime. However, Iran itself has called on the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan to allow girls and women to go back to school.

The demo

On Tuesday, videos and photos of teachers’ demonstrations in several Iranian cities surfaced on the Internet. Other videos show Iranian security forces using pepper spray and water cannons to disperse the demonstrations.

Teachers have been attacked by security forces for months and threatened with arrest, the AP news agency writes. They were threatened for resuming their long-standing demands for salary increases in the face of the collapse of the Iranian currency.

Iran’s state media made no mention of Tuesday’s demonstrations or the use of security forces to disperse the demonstrators.

the investigations)

The Iranian government initially ignored reports of the alleged poisoning, but faced growing public pressure – and had to respond in recent days. On Monday, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said all those guilty of the alleged poisoning should be sentenced to death as they committed an “unforgivable crime”.

The Iranian regime is currently investigating the incidents and allegations. Member of the committee of inquiry is parliamentarian Mohammed Hassan Asefari. He told the state news agency ISNA on Tuesday that up to 5,000 schoolgirls in 230 schools in 25 of Iran’s 31 provinces had complained of illnesses. No other official report gives such high figures.

Deputy Interior Minister Majid Mirahmadi said on Iranian state television on Tuesday that authorities have arrested an undetermined number of suspects in connection with the poisoning.

But Iran is not only investigating the poisonings, but also the reporting of the poisonings. Tehran’s chief prosecutor Ali Salehi said authorities have begun pressing charges against journalists in charge of the alleged poisonings. Among the charges are “false allegations and completely false statements,” Salehi said, according to Iran’s Mizan news agency.

The World Health Organization documented a similar phenomenon in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2012. At the time, no evidence was found of the regime, extremists, or anyone else using poison in schools. The WHO said at the time that it was apparently a “psychogenic mass disease”.

(yum)