Iran schoolgirls 'deliberately' poisoned to stop them from getting an education: Report
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Rakshita Agarwal
- Updated: February 28, 2023
- IST: 2:44 pm
 After many Iranian schoolgirls experienced a strange wave of headaches, nausea, vomiting, and respiratory problems. A senior health official has now suggested that the youngsters may have been poisoned on purpose as some extremists wanted to shut down schools.
After many Iranian schoolgirls experienced a strange wave of headaches, nausea, vomiting, and respiratory problems. A senior health official has now suggested that the youngsters may have been poisoned on purpose as some extremists wanted to shut down schools.
Students in the holy city of Qom, located south of the capital Tehran, were the first to report a wave of widespread ailments. Girls from nearby cities then became ill as well. According to Iran’s deputy health minister, they were poisoned with “chemical substances.”
Numerous of the girls were treated in hospitals after becoming ill. This would have required them to miss class, which is exactly what some extremists desire. According to reports in the local media, religious fanatics seeking to stop females from attending school may be responsible for this.
The spate of poisonings.
The first case was reported by a school team in November. On February 22, news of the most recent occurrence came from Qom. Hospitalized were 15 schoolgirls. The neighbourhood media reports that they are now stable and being watched.
The deputy governor of Lorestan, Majid Monemi, reported on Sunday that 50 female pupils at a high school in Borujerd, western Iran, had once more been poisoned.18 girls were hospitalized in Qom in November.Since then, hundreds more youngsters have fallen ill and reported having similar symptoms in the nation’s gender-separated public institutions.Iran’s clergy are located in the very conservative and devout city of Qom, which is where the first poisoning was originally recorded.
To prevent girls from school.
It first starts getting attention when the deputy health minister admitted to foul play According to the semi-official news agency Fars, Panahi told reporters on Sunday that “some persons sought the shutdown of all institutions, especially girls’ schools.”
The state news agency, Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), cited Panahi as saying, “Following the poisoning of several kids in Qom schools, it was found that some people wanted all schools, especially girls’ schools, to be shuttered.”
Mohammad Javad Montazeri, Iran’s senior prosecutor, suggested that the occurrences might have been planned. The “worrying wave of some form of poisoning” at the city’s schools, he claimed in a letter to the state prosecutor in Qom, suggests “the likelihood of intentional criminal conduct.”
It was strange, according to Nafiseh Moradi, an Islamic studies researcher at Tehran’s Al Zahra University, which is an all-female public university, that girls rather than boys were most impacted by the ailments.
Since December, just one boys’ school has reported cases of poisoning.
Parents protest
Parents of the sick girls confronted school officials and staff members in a furious manner. In Qam, parents gathered on February 14th outside the governorate to “demand an answer.”
Families are now paralyzed by fear, and many girls are skipping school. Many schools in Qam were “unofficially” closed, according to the reformist publication Shargh daily. Online learning has been demanded by some.
Only 50 of the 250 kids in our school showed up for class, according to a teacher in Qom who wished to remain anonymous.
A probe ordered
Medical professionals reportedly performed toxicological testing but were unable to identify the illness’s root cause. Blood samples from sick students have not revealed any bacterial or viral illnesses.
As several children have reported smelling something weird in their classrooms, they have not ruled out the idea that a deadly gas may have been the origin of the illnesses, according to RFE/RL.
The intelligence and education ministries are attempting to determine what is causing the poisonings, according to government spokesman Ali Bahadori Jahromi. According to AFP, Prosecutor General Mohammad Jafar Montazeri initiated a legal investigation into the incidents last week.
Yet so far, no one has been taken into custody.
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