Iran, female students continue to suffer attacks across the country and still report symptoms from chemical inhalation in classrooms

ROME – Respiratory problems, gastrointestinal discomfort, fainting, eye irritation: since November 2022, thousands of Iranian students have fallen ill after breathing in the odors produced by chemicals in the classrooms. In many of these episodes, the symptoms were so worrying that they led to hospitalization, reports Hadi Ghaemi, director of the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI). The security forces – Ghaemi writes again – threaten parents and teachers with retaliation if they speak publicly about these cases. The authorities refused independent investigations by UN experts.

Arbitrary arrests. At least one woman was detained in Tehran in April 2023 for posting videos of girls intoxicated at a school on social media, according to local media. In Qom, however, the authorities arrested journalist Ali Pourtabatabaei in March because he had reported on the attacks. His detention was taken by the United Nations as further evidence of the Iranian government’s desire to silence all those who seek to expose the abuses. The suspicion is that these attacks were organized and carried out to punish girls involved in the Women, Life, Freedom movement, for opposing the compulsory use of the hijab and for demanding equality.

The testimonials. “On April 17, around 9:30 in the morning, they gassed our school,” a teacher told CHRI. , they kept repeating that there was no attack, just a stunt committed by the students.” In interviews conducted by CHRI, both students and teachers who were at the sites of the attacks described chemical odors and experienced associated symptoms to poisoning.

The story. Negarin is a sixteen-year-old student at the Tolouie Public School for girls in Shahinshahr, Isfahan province, and is also one of the girls poisoned in an attack that took place at her school on April 11. She told CHRI that the school bell rang a few minutes before the end time that day. “We had a math lesson and at the end of the hour I smelled something like an inflated plastic balloon. The bell rang a little early and we were all told to go into the courtyard. My eyes were burning and I was struggling to breathe, so I fell to the floor. The school door was locked, we couldn’t escape, we couldn’t call our families.” Negarin said that that morning, during the attack, the principal and some teachers wore a face mask, for this reason they had not suffered any symptoms.

Security requests. In several schools that have experienced episodes of this type, teachers and parents have asked, for now in vain, for cameras to be installed. A teacher from Karaj told CHRI that on the day her school was attacked with chemical gas, teachers and students had been forced to stay inside the building until the end of classes. And when they pointed out that something was wrong, the school authorities and the police accused them of lying. Another attack at a school in Alborz province resulted in more severe poisoning symptoms, resulting in many students being hospitalised.

The first chemical attacks. The first attacks took place in the city of Qom on November 30, 2022 and since then they have been carried out in many schools in the country, in some cases several times in the same school. Most of the incidents were recorded in girls’ high schools, but there were some in boys’ high schools as well. In total, more than one hundred students were hospitalized, 24 of them with severe symptoms.

The accusations against the boys by the authorities. At least three teenagers were arrested in Larestan, Fars province, on suspicion of being involved in the attacks, but the authorities have provided scant details of their cases and have not made public any evidence against them. Meanwhile, the chemical attacks continued. The detained boys were prevented from receiving visits and from calling their families. These arrests – CHRI denounces – are not only opaque, but also contradict the Iranian government’s repeated claims that chemical attacks have never occurred in schools and students have simulated symptoms and pretended to feel sick.

Government investigations. On April 14, the Minister of Health, Bahram Eynollahi, said that a scientific committee made up of the best professors in the country investigated the health conditions of the students, since there was no concrete evidence of the poisonings. The bottom line is that the teens got sick from anxiety and stress or because they weren’t in good health. In some cases, the bad smells in the schools were due instead to the joke made by other students, said the minister. However, the Fars news agency concluded that more than 90 percent of chemical attacks in schools were carried out by students.