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What is behind the mysterious poisoning of school girls in Iran?

1 year ago babelfish

What is behind the mysterious poisoning of school girls in Iran?

After the hangings, the repression with violence and other monstrosities, in Iran there have been alleged poisonings among young girls for months, especially among those who go to school. Here are some of the hypotheses that according to experts could explain the phenomenon

The hangings, the arrests, the torture, the rapes, the bullets in the eyes and now the poisoning. But there is nothing that can stop Iranian women, girls and girls from that September 16 in which demonstrations began against the regime of Ayatollah Khamenei who killed, among many others, 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who has become a symbol of a revolution unstoppable that shouts "Woman, life, freedom".

Now, while strikes and protests continue throughout the country, attempts are being made to understand who is behind and what caused the mysterious poisonings which, since last November, have affected thousands of girls, mostly female students. The same ones who bravely cut their hair, don't wear the veil, burn the images of the Supreme Guide and give the middle finger to the authorities who repress them.

The most widespread hypothesis is that the alleged poisonings, which began in the city of Qom but have now spread throughout the country, are part of an extremist response – probably with the tacit endorsement of the state – to the protests led by women and girls.

THE CASES

Under the Tehran regime it is not easy to establish the number of cases registered but there are certainly many. "Twenty-five provinces and about 230 schools have been affected and more than 5,000 girls and boys have been poisoned," Mohammad-Hassan Asafari, a lawmaker and member of Iran's parliamentary committee investigating the incidents, told Students' News on Monday. Agency cited by New York Magazine 's Intelligencer .

Last week, other government officials and state media said more than 1,200 female students had fallen ill following incidents in 60 or more schools in 15 provinces, and Iranian human rights groups reported by the Guardian even say more than 7,000 students in at least 103 schools.

The incidents were reported in at least 99 cities across the country's 28 provinces and 81 were recorded on the day with the highest number of attacks.

WHY SCHOOLS

Although education is a very dangerous weapon for a regime, according to the Guardian , even that of girls is now an "accepted and quite normal" issue in Iran. In fact, although places for women in some public universities have been reduced since 2012, "the principle that gives girls the right to go to school is not controversial".

According to World Bank data, female literacy in Iran has risen from 26 percent in 1976, before the Islamic Revolution, to 85 percent in 2021. And since 2011, women outnumber men on university campuses.

THE TRACK OF EXTREMISTS AND PESTICIDES

Due to the severe limits on press freedom in the country, it is very difficult to be certain about what is happening, but it is possible to piece together some facts. For Deepa Parent, a human rights journalist who covered the story for the British newspaper, "the attacks are not sophisticated at all".

"A doctor – Parent reported – told me that, based on the symptoms, it is likely that it is a weak organophosphate agent [widely used in agriculture as a pesticide]", which until now had only been found in people who work in agricultural or military environments.

"Although female education is widely accepted, there are radical Islamists who are against it," explained the journalist. But while it is possible that extremists are taking advantage of the current chaos to realize their misogynistic vision of society, the incidents are widely seen as a consequence of recent events.

THE GAS TRAIL AND THE ANALOGY WITH AFGHANISTAN

The BBC , however, analyzed dozens of videos in which some students or entire classes were victims of symptoms – including respiratory problems, nausea, dizziness and fatigue – which forced them to go to hospital.

Witnesses say they smelled "a very strange smell", "so unpleasant" to remember "rotten fruit but much more pungent", others claim to have seen suspicious objects thrown in school yards.

The Wall Street Journal reported a class completely ill after a girl with asthma experienced difficulty breathing and Dan Kaszeta, a chemical weapons expert at the Royal United Services Institute think tank, told the BBC “that poisonous substances can degrade rapidly, making it very difficult to draw firm conclusions.”

However, tear gas, widely used to repel protesters, is a "plausible" hypothesis for the expert because poor quality ones can release "a lot of garbage".

Kaszeta said the incidents in Iran bear similarities to a series of alleged poisoning cases in Afghan schools since 2012 that have never been properly investigated and remained largely unsolved.

THE MASS SOCIOGENIC DISEASE HYPOTHESIS

The BBC also cites the hypothesis that "some of the cases may be evidence of a mass sociogenic disease, or with symptoms without a biomedical cause, resulting from the repression of female students who have played a leading role in this movement".

"In cases of mass sociogenic disease, the symptoms felt are real, but they are caused by anxiety, not poisoning by toxic substances," explained Professor Simon Wessely, psychiatrist and epidemiologist at King's College London. "The early stages of poisoning from many things are quite similar: your pulse starts pounding, you feel faint, you turn pale, you get butterflies in your stomach, you shake."

These symptoms, according to the expert, could be due to an infection, poisoning or mass anxiety.

Similarities, recalls the BBC , can be seen in the outbreaks of undiagnosed diseases in Kosovo in 1990 and in the occupied West Bank in 1986. In both cases, Wessely says, no biomedical cause has been found and experts believe they are the result of a mass sociogenic disease.

However, it is very likely that we will never know what happened but, according to Parent, these incidents have aroused a new sense of indignation because we are dealing with students seen as children and the sense of protection could give new strength to all those who oppose it also because , as Marjane Satrapi wrote in Persepolis , “it is fear that makes us lose our conscience” and “turns us into cowards”.

But this is not the case for Iranian women, men and young people who continue to fight for their freedom.

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/sanita/cosa-ce-dietro-i-misteriosi-avvelenamenti-delle-ragazze-nelle-scuole-in-iran/ on Wed, 08 Mar 2023 14:19:09 +0000.