MESOP MIDEAST WATCH : Who’ s Poisoning Schoolgirls in Iran?

Iran’s Etemad news agency says hundreds of schoolgirls have been poisoned in at least 58 schools in 10 provinces over the past three months. In the past two days, at least three schools in Tehran described students being poisoned by toxic gas, according to the Shargh Daily paper.

People are rightly outraged. Some girls are avoiding school to be safe. Everyone is demanding answers.

Iranian authorities have responded with contradictory explanations and even appeared to downplay the seriousness of the situation. Some local and national authorities claim to have opened investigations, but they’ve provided no further details.

No one can ignore the wider context here: the authorities’ brutal crackdown on protests where schoolgirls and women students have often been at the forefront.

Following 22-year-old Mahsa (Jina) Amini’s death in custody in September, they’ve been risking their lives in the streets, chanting “women, life, freedom.”

Many Iranians worry that the reported poisonings are aimed at spreading fear to silence schoolgirls. Many in the opposition are convinced security officials themselves are involved or at least complicit.

The poisonings demand a prompt, transparent, and impartial investigation. Authorities should bring perpetrators to justice and ensure the safety of all students.

But Iranian authorities have a terrible record of investigating violence against women and girls.

In 2014, for example, attackers threw acid into the faces of several women in Isfahan, but no one was ever arrested or prosecuted. And their failure to investigate security services’ widespread abuses against protesters since September speaks volumes.

The sad reality is that what Iran’s schoolgirls and their parents deserve at the very minimum right now – a genuine investigation – is what’s perhaps least likely to happen.