It all started three months ago when girls from the Iranian city of Qom reported a strange smell of tangerines in their school. Some began to experience difficulty breathing, nausea and numbness. Eighteen of these girls were taken to the hospital. Looks like they were poisoned with poisonous gas.

To date, more than 1,000 girls in 15 cities are showing symptoms of similar conditions, according to the Guardian Morning Newsletter. Last week, when dozens of schoolgirls were hospitalized, the Iranian government acknowledged the events for the first time.

Many say the alleged attacks are part of an extremist response—perhaps with tacit state support—to the protests led by women and girls that rocked Iran since the death of Mahshi Amini in September 2022 and beyond.

But there are also theories that some cases may be indicative of mass sociogenic illness – symptoms without a biomedical cause – caused by the repression of female students who played a leading role in this movement. And as teenage girls are routinely targeted by security services for taking part in protests, more protests took place in Tehran over the weekend due to an apparent escalation in the threat to the country’s children and an increase in hospitalizations.

However, it is worth noting that for many years the education of girls was an accepted and fairly common part of life in Iran. Since 2011, there have been more women than men on college campuses. According to the World Bank, female literacy has risen from 26% in 1976, before the Islamic Revolution, to 85% in 2021. go to school, no doubt.

“The education of daughters has been important to Iranian families for a long time,” said Deepa Parent, a human rights journalist who covered the report for the Guardian. “There are government scholarships for girls. That’s part of what made these stories so poignant.”

What causes episodes?

Due to severe restrictions on press freedom in Iran, journalists face difficulties in investigating the circumstances of the incidents, and there are no immediate signs of responsibility. However, during interviews with victims and their families, NGO workers and medical professionals, some details were gathered.

“There’s nothing complicated about attacking,” Parent said. “The doctor told me that, judging by the observed symptoms, it is possible that the poison consists of a weak organophosphorus agent.” They are widely used in agriculture as pesticides, and, Parent adds, the doctor told her that the only people he had treated in the past with similar symptoms worked in agricultural or military settings. Meanwhile, an Iranian MP said last week that nitrogen gas was found in the poison in some schools.

In an effort to limit possible blame, some have drawn attention to the fact that the first incidents, which have since spread elsewhere, took place in Qom, a very religious city about 150 kilometers from Tehran. “While education for girls is widespread, there are radical Islamists in the city who oppose it,” Parent told the Guardian.

Some wonder if these incidents could have been authorized or allowed by the government as part of an effort to intimidate the protest movement that has swept the country since September, when Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish woman, died in the custody of his “vice police”. Iran. Given the simplicity of the suspicious raw material, it is also possible that the attacks are an imitation of some relevant movement.

There have also been claims that at least some of the cases may be the result of “massive sociogenic illness,” where symptoms spread without a clear biomedical cause. Proponents of this argument point to Iran’s violent crackdown on protesters as a possible trigger.

A review of the blood tests of some Iranian schoolgirls found no evidence of toxins, the BBC notes in a helpful note, though it also says the results are not enough to rule out poisoning even in the cases considered. The Wall Street Journal reported that in a video posted to social media last week, a class appeared to fall ill after a girl with asthma had trouble breathing, prompting a teacher to ask if the students felt something.

While it is likely that some cases can be explained in this way, witnesses report seeing suspicious objects being thrown into schoolyards. Dan Cassetta, a chemical weapons expert at the Rusi think tank, told the BBC that poisons can go bad quickly, making definitive conclusions difficult. Some also doubted that similar incidents involving men or boys were subjected to similar analysis.

Why are girls being targeted?

“After Mahshi’s death, it was the students who took to the streets first,” Parent said. “But soon after that, there were reports of three teenage girls dying from blows to the head: Setareh Tajik, Sarina Esmailzade and Nika Sakarami.”

“These deaths have completely changed the situation. I started seeing pictures of teenage girls giving the middle finger to a private protest group, burning a photo of Ayatollah Khamenei – they started it in the classrooms. And then these girls started making posters and participating in protests.”

While it is possible that extremists are taking advantage of the tense political situation to act on their long-standing misogynistic view of girls’ education, these incidents are widely viewed as a consequence of recent events.

“No one believes that this is a coincidence, [οι δηλητηριάσεις] they followed the protests,” Parent said. “You hear from activists and protest networks that this is revenge for these girls and their families.”

How did the Iranian government react?

After months of silence on the incidents, the recent spike in cases appears to have put pressure on authorities. The Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said today, Monday, that the poisoning of the girls was “an unforgivable crime.”

On Sunday, Iranian Deputy Education Minister Younes Panahi acknowledged the poisoning of “several female students” in Qom. On Wednesday, Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi said an investigation was underway. It appears to have had little effect so far: Over the past week, Parent says, “the number of reports we’re seeing has skyrocketed.”

He pointed to another possible reason for the decision of the Islamic Republic to recognize this phenomenon. “The Secretary of State was at the UN Human Rights Council and was scheduled to interview Christiane Amanpour on CNN. It may have forced them to take action.” At the UN HRC, an Iranian diplomat said his country “has achieved a lot in empowering women and girls.”

However, few observers will trust any investigation. In addition to questions about whether authorities authorized the attacks, “Iranian authorities have a horrendous history of investigating cases of violence against women and girls,” Human Rights Watch said last week, pointing to the 2014 acid attacks on women in the city of Isfahan, which did not lead to arrests or prosecution.

What does all this mean for the future of the protest movement?

Whatever the difficulty of assessing the causes, the flow of incidents comes at a hectic moment. Although there has been a period of relative calm in the protests lately – possibly due to an alarming increase in the number of executions, as Amnesty International counted almost 100 executions in January and February, a significant increase from the same period last year – incidents with girls in schools have provoked a new sense of outrage, Parent said. “The protesters tell me they can’t let this happen to young girls.” On Wednesday – International Women’s Day – more demonstrations are planned.

“These schoolgirls look like babies, they protect each other,” Parent said. “It was the death of these 16-year-old girls that sparked the movement in the beginning, and outrage at the plight of young girls can now do the same thing again.”

Source: Guardian