Iran: According to state media, an Iranian deputy minister said on Sunday that “some people” were poisoning schoolgirls in the holy city of Qom with the goal of shutting down girls’ education.
Since late November, hundreds of cases of respiratory poisoning among schoolgirls have been reported, primarily in Qom, south of Tehran, with some requiring hospitalization.
Younes Panahi, the deputy health minister, implied on Sunday that the poisonings were intentional.
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“After the poisoning of several students in Qom schools, it was discovered that some people wanted all schools, especially girls’ schools, to be closed,” Panahi was quoted as saying by the IRNA state news agency.
He didn’t go into detail. So far, no arrests have been made in connection with the poisonings.
According to IRNA, on February 14, parents of sick students gathered outside the city’s governorate to “demand an explanation” from authorities.
The poisoning had been intentionally done to draw a barrier in girl’s education; confirms deputy health minister, Younes Panahi#girl #education #educational #EducationForAll #Iran #Iranian #school #Schoolgirls #schoolteens #poison #drugs #poison #Newsfile pic.twitter.com/L2sj73PAs5
— News9 (@News9Tweets) February 27, 2023
Homayoun Sameh Najafabadi, a member of the parliament’s health committee, also confirmed in an interview with the Didbaniran website that the poisoning of female students in Qom and Borujerd schools is deliberate.
These statements are made in a situation that earlier Youssef Nouri, the Minister of Education called the reports about the poisoning of schoolgirls “rumours”, claiming that the students taken to the hospital had “underlying diseases”.
However, Majid Monemi, the deputy governor of Lorestan, announced on Sunday that 50 female students at a high school in Borujerd, western Iran, had been poisoned once more.
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The following day, government spokesman Ali Bahadori Jahromi stated that the intelligence and education ministries were investigating the poisonings.
Prosecutor General Mohammad Jafar Montazeri ordered a judicial investigation into the incidents last week.
The serial poisoning of Iranian students began in December in the religious city of Qom and quickly spread to several other cities.
The government has not determined the cause of the poisonings, but some local media speculate that it could be the work of religious zealots seeking to keep girls out of school.
Last year, teenage schoolgirls joined anti-government protests, and many of them removed their hijab in protest.
