Iran International
Iran's intelligence ministry said poisonous gas attacks on girls’ schools were pranks, blaming “enemies” for taking advantage of the incidents to discredit the regime.
In a statement Friday, the ministry denied any indication that poisonous substances had caused the illness of students and said samples taken from the scene of the incidents examined by “the most reliable laboratories” in the country had not yielded any suspicious materials.
The report followed months of demands by people on social media and even some newspapers for the government to tell the public what was happening to schoolgirls.
The ministry attributed the hundreds of hospitalizations to stink bombs (stinkpots) often used for creating unpleasant smells by pranksters, pepper sprays, tear gas and similar substances used by students to disrupt classes. It even mentioned spurious causes, such as gas fuel leak from vehicles and urban gas, smoke from trash burning outside schools, and mass psychogenic illness resulting from stress.
However, some of the students had to be hospitalized for up to a week due to the severeness of their symptoms but most others were released within hours. In some cases, symptoms have lasted for weeks.
It also claimed that nearly all the students hospitalized following the incidents had recovered by simple treatments such as oxygen, saline and dextrose intravenous injections, and sedatives to treat anxiety.
A considerable number of students had faked illness after other students in the same class or school said they were ill, and the most reported cases of illness were in the southwestern province of Khuzestan.
The poisonings started in the religious city of Qom in central Iran November 30, but the intelligence ministry claimed that the first incident had taken place in Noor, Mazandaran Province, much earlier on November 6, and spread to other provinces in late February.
Many Iranians believe that the attacks which mainly target girls’ schools were perpetrated by the regime itself or a network of extremists who wanted to scare girls and keep them away from schools and called it “state terrorism”, but the ministry denied the existence of any such network.
The ministry tried to blame social media for the incidents, saying that suspicious networks spread rumors.
Naturally, once the attacks began, thousands of people began discussing it on social media.
However, after months of incidents at schools, police have not arrested anyone, although they have made vague claims of detaining 100 suspects.
The statement accused “foreign enemies” and media outside Iran, particularly those broadcasting in Persian, of using school poisoning incidents to ignite unrest because the Mahsa protests that started in mid-September had begun to subside.
In some cases, the statement claimed, the incidents were perpetrated with “anti-security goals against the people” by those who wanted to make footage of these incidents and send them to “hostile Persian-language media” outside Iran. “Perpetrators of such cases were arrested in most cases and handed over to judicial authorities,” the ministry said.
Again, the government has produced no proof of any such arrests, as they blame any negative incident or news to foreign enemies.
These “individuals with hostile motivations”, the ministry’s statement said, were under investigation to reveal their possible connection with terrorist organizations such as the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK).
In March, the local channel of the state television in Fars province aired the so-called ‘confessions’ of a man and his daughter arrested and accused of attacking schools with N2 gas canisters.
The police chief alleged that the accused had also made recordings of the school attacks and sent it to “hostile media including Iran International TV”. He claimed that the accused girls confessed they wanted to create an atmosphere of insecurity in schools and defame the Islamic Republic.
The findings, from PEN America’s latest Freedom To Write Index, puts Iran in second place globally, only beaten to the top spot by the dictatorship of China.
The crackdown on anti-government protests after the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in September led to the particular targeting of writers and artists alongside other cultural figures, celebrities and athletes.
The numbers of those jailed rose from 22 in 2021 to 57, with one third of those behind bars now women, whose numbers rose from five to 16. The global study found that Iran jailed more than one-third of the total number of women writers jailed worldwide, 16 of 42 as the regime cracks down on the women led protests sparked by the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini.
Some of the country’s leading voices have been severely punished, including Nasrin Sotoudeh, who was threatened with being returned to jail after speaking to or writing for international media outlets; author and activist Narges Mohammadi, who bravely continued to speak out from Evin prison; and writer Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee, arrested in September.
“Iran’s creative community—long at the forefront of fighting for free expression and human rights—was singled out as part of a broader crackdown on dissent in 2022,” said Karin Deutsch Karlekar, PEN America’s director of Free Expression at Risk Programs.
“Alongside the dozens of writers and artists detained, the harsh sentences handed down and custodial abuse faced by some prisoners were an attempt to warn others to keep silent.”
In 2022, 311 writers were jailed globally according to PEN America, whose database contains 813 active cases from over 80 countries of writers, poets, online commentators and journalists at risk for their writing.
Karlekar called on the United Nations Human Rights Council, Special Mandates, and newly-established Independent International Fact-finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran to include a consistent focus on writers and artists in their investigations, reports, and public statements.
In its systematic targeting of writers, artists, and dissenting voices with arrest and detention, the Iranian government often deploys spurious charges based on national security or “propaganda against the state” to charge and sentence individuals. Some alleged “offenses,” such as mohrabeh, or “war against God,” potentially carry the death penalty.
The government has also singled out artists and singers whose work was critical of ruling authorities and explicitly addressed either political or social themes, including rappers Saman Yasin and Toomaj Salehi, both arrested in October and charged with mohrabeh, or “enmity against God,”. Both men have undergone torture in custody.
Poet and filmmaker Baktash Abtin died a tragic and preventable death in custody on January 8, 2022, after authorities repeatedly refused to provide him needed medical care. Severe abuse was also recorded in the case of blogger Hossein Ronaghi, detained in late September, subjected to ill-treatment in custody and denied medical care.
Shorter periods of detention have also been handed down to several dozen writers and poets supporting the protests, many of whom have also suffered torture and mistreatment in Iran’s brutal jails.
These have included the poet and theater director Amirhossein Barimani, literary writer and commentator Farshid Ghorbanpour, and poets Mona Borzouei, Behnaz Amani, Atefeh Chaharmahalian, Behrouz Yasemi and Saeed Heleichi.
Writers advocating for ethnic or religious minority rights continue to be particularly targeted, including Kurdish language teacher and rights advocate Zahra Mohammadi, Kurdish researcher Mozghan Kavousi, and Bahai writer and poet Mahvash Sabet.
Since protests began in September, over 500 civilians have been killed by regime security forces with around 20,000 arrested. At least four executions have taken place for protesters and an unconfirmed number of many others sentenced to death for their role in the uprising.
Rights groups say executions last year rose by 75% on the previous year with at least 582 people put to death in 2022.