Protests Forced Iran’s Government To Free Some Prisoners: Writer

Ali Pour-Tabatabaie, who is one of the administrators of Qom News website was reportedly detained on Sunday morning in Qom 120 kilometers south of Tehran.

According to local media, including Etemad Daily, there is still no information about which security or intelligence outfit arrested the journalist.

Milad Alavi, a reporter at Shargh, wrote in a tweet that Pour-Tabatabaie was arrested on Sunday morning but "called his sister at around 8 pm to let her know about his detention". However, due to the sudden disconnection of the phone he was unable to explain the reason for his arrest.

His arrest drew reactions of several journalists and activists in the country, including Abbas Abdi, a reformist commentator, who wrote on Twitter that the arrest of Pour-Tabatabaie "not only does not help to clear up the ambiguity about poisonings, but also makes it worse."

About 80 more schools were targeted by chemical attacks on Sunday with dozens of girls hospitalized.

The gas attacks, targeting girls' schools since November, intensified this week with hundreds more girls falling sick across Iran.

It is believed that the attacks are a coordinated effort to deter the young students from supporting ongoing unrest, triggered by the death of Mahsa Amini.

During a session for examining next year’s budget bill, Seyed Ghani Nazari, the representative of Khalkhal in northwestern Ardabil Province, used his time to speak about his constituents’ anger over the poisoning of schoolgirls in his district.

An ultra-hardliner member of the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, Javad Karimi Ghodousi, who was standing behind Nazari, kept interrupting him while other lawmakers also shouted to drown his voice. Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf also intervened, asking Nazari to only speak about the budget bill.

“Mr Ghalibaf, what do you expect me to talk about when students were hospitalized in Khalkhal? It’s my duty to demand the government and responsible bodies to investigate. My phone has been ringing since morning and people are asking me to pursue the matter,” Nazari said as other lawmakers joined in the dispute, shouting and gathering around Nazari.

Ghodousi later alleged that those who speak about the poisoning incidents could be “adding fuel to the enemy’s fire”.

The parliament has established a working group to investigate the incidents of mysterious poisonous gas attacks on girls’ schools that have now spread to around 100 cities.

Poisoning of students was reported in at least 80 more schools across the country Sunday.

Hardliners and government officials are increasingly attributing the gas attacks to “students’ pranks” or “enemies of the Islamic Republic”.

Authorities have yet not offered any report on the incidents or on findings based on samples taken from over 1,500 students who have been hospitalized since the first incident took place in the religious city of Qom on November 30.

The ultra-hardliner Kayhan newspaper whose chief editor Hossein Shariatmadari is an appointee of the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on Saturday claimed that opposition groups such as the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK) have been perpetrating the attacks on behalf of foreign enemies and casting the blame on religious groups in Iran or the government.

“It’s worthy of note that certain western governments and intelligence services have a long history of committing crimes and blaming others for them including the chemical attacks by their Sunni extremist mercenary groups in Syria for which they blamed the Syrian government. The CIA and Mossad have committed many acts of biological terror,” Kayhan wrote.

However, such claims are countered by citizens that how the ‘enemy’ is able to conduct such widespread attacks if the government has control over the country.

The IRGC-linked Fars News Agency on Sunday claimed that experts believe pranks by teenage students or “mass phobia” are the most likely explanations for the mysterious poisonings.

Given the highly synchronized nature of the attacks, many in Iran accuse the government of having a direct role in the poisoning of schoolgirls, as revenge for their rejection of the hijab and their active role in the Woman, Life, Freedom protests in the past few months. Even if some fundamentalist groups are behind the chemical attacks the government stands accused of covering up their crime.

“People from inside the system must be collaborating with the perpetrators,” wrote Abbas Akhoundi, a roads and urban development minister in Hassan Rouhani’s government, in Shargh newspaper Saturday.

Some medical experts such as Dr. Mohammadreza Hashemian, an official of Masih Daneshvari Hospital in Tehran where many of the victims have been treated, have pointed out that the gases suspected of being used by the attackers seem to be composed of various chemicals that are not accessible to ordinary people.

After public outrage and criticism even by some regime loyalists, four men accused of viciously beating a woman in Tehransar were arrested.

Video footage of the attack on the mother outside a girls’ school near the capital Tehran on Wednesday went viral, with demands for answers flooding social media.

The police have denied any involvement in the incident which saw several men surrounding and assaulting the woman who was apparently accusing the government of responsibility for the attacks. One of the men who dragged the woman by the hair has been identified as a Basij militia official by social media users.

It is often difficult to differentiate plainclothes agents from Basij militiamen or members of the public. Plainclothes forces who could be affiliated with any of the many intelligence and military organizations have often been seen working in tandem with pro-government vigilantes, beating and arresting protesters, and even destroying people’s vehicles and breaking shop windows.

Another video posted on social media on Saturday shows plainclothes forces violently arresting two schoolgirls in Karaj, forcing them into a car before driving them away.

While speculation grows as to the perpetrators of the poisonings in the girls’ schools, which began in the religious city of Qom in November and has now reached scores of schools around the country, even ministers have pointed the finger towards the government.

Last week, deputy education minister Younes Panahi said that "It was found that some people wanted all schools, especially girls' schools, to be closed," confirming fears that the regime is cracking down on girls who have been at the forefront of the Women, Life, Freedom movement since September.

"It has been revealed that the chemical compounds used to poison students are not war chemicals, and the poisoned students do not need aggressive treatment, and a large percentage of the chemical agents used are treatable," he told a press conference.

The five months of protests, sparked by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini in September, arrested by the morality police for not wearing her headscarf appropriately, has been supported nationally by schools, images being shared of girls burning pictures of the Supreme Leader, burning headscarves and cutting their hair.

Parents have staged rallies outside education departments in several Iranian cities in protest of the authorities’ failure to address the poisoning attacks. A number of the protesters were reportedly arrested by security forces.

Investigations to find the attacker of the woman outside the school is difficult due to the existence of numerous and parallel organizations, Mohsen Borhani, a criminologist and professor of law at Tehran University said in a tweet after the police’s claim that the man beating the woman outside the school was not one of theirs: “Woe to the nation who does not know which organization is responsible for beating it up!”

In another tweet, Borhani told the authorities that had they not prevented people from taking videos during protests, or forcing owners of CCTVs to delete their footage of the protest, hundreds responsible for attacks similar to the one on the woman outside the Tehransar school would have been identified. He added that authorities did not truly wish to prevent such acts of aggression against the public.

During recent unrest, protesters often noticed certain clothing items and accessories such as baseball caps or crossbody sling bags and shirt tails draped over their trousers or even two watches, one on each wrist, to allow them recognize each other from others on the scene. In one case a protester reported that plainclothes forces were all wearing red t-shirts that day.

In an interview with the Iranian Labour News Agency (ILNA) on January 8, interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi denied that there were any plainclothes forces on the ground and claimed all security forces dealing with protesters were uniformed.

However, protesters claimed plainclothes forces who often moved in groups of four, riding on two motorbikes and carrying teasers and walkie-talkies, even openly carried weapons. In one of the videos from a university in Tehran in November, a plainclothes agent is seen drawing a gun from his sling bag and taking a shot.

The poisonings, targeting girls' schools since November, have been ramped up this week with hundreds more girls falling sick across Iran.

Social media videos surfaced on Sunday show that students were poisoned in many cities, including Fouladshahr and some other cities in Esfahan (Isfahan) province, Karaj and Fardis in Alborz province, Tabriz, Yazd, Hamedan, Shiraz, Ramhormoz and Mahshahr in Khuzestan province, Qazvin, Gonbad-e Kavus in Golestan, and the capital Tehran. Only In the city of Yazd, at least eight schools were attacked on Sunday.

On Saturday alone, schools in 33 cities were targeted by the same gas that has already affected around 1,500 students in recent weeks.

The scale of the intentional poisoning of female students -- which started in the religious city of Qom and spread further throughout the country and reached schools in small towns and villages -- has stepped up in recent weeks, becoming a daily occurrence.

State media is trying to downplay the seriousness of the incidents, with some officials such as former MP Jamileh Kadivar calling the attacks “mass hysteria.”

Many, such as Dr. Mohammadreza Hashemian, a doctor in the special care department of Masih Daneshvari Hospital, fear the poisonings are being led by regime authorities. He said that the gases used to poison the students are a combination of different chemicals, which it is "not possible for ordinary people" to access.

With women and girls having been at the forefront of protests, burning headscarves and cutting their hair in defiance of the regime, it is believed that the attacks are a coordinated effort to deter the young students from supporting ongoing unrest, triggered by the death of the young woman, Mahsa Amini. Her death in morality police custody after being arrested for the inappropriate use of her headscarf, has triggered national protest since September.

The patterns of the school attacks are similar to chemical attacks committed by radical Islamists in Chechnya and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The regime’s Health Minister Bahram Eynollahi admitted that the girls have suffered "mild poison" attacks, while Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli said on Saturday, "In field studies, suspicious samples have been found, which are being investigated... to identify the causes of the students' illness, and the results will be published as soon as possible."

Outraged by the Islamic Republic’s inaction and reluctance to identify and arrest those behind the attacks, many parents, students and other activists have held demonstrations outside the buildings of the Education Ministry across the country, but security forces attacked the gatherings and arrested some of the parents and students.

In a gathering of parents outside an Education Ministry building in Tehran, people chanted "Basij, Guards, you are our Daesh," likening the Revolutionary Guards and other security forces to the Islamic State group. Comparing the Islamic Republic with the Taliban, protesters also chanted "Death to the Taliban, whether in Iran or Afghanistan".

Also on Sunday, a group of about 420 Iranian political and civil activists issued a statement to media, describing the poisoning of students as a "criminal act" that has caused "national concern".

On Friday, the United Nations human rights office in Geneva called for a transparent investigation into the attacks. Countries including the US and Germany have also voiced concern.

Nobel Peace Prize winner and human rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi says there is no doubt about the role of the regime in the mass poisoning attacks. Iran's exiled queen Farah Pahlavi also condemned the attacks, saying the Islamic Republic is showing parts of "its impure nature to the world." 

Exiled prince Reza Pahlavi also tweeted, “Iranian girls are being poisoned at schools across Iran. I urge the international community to bring pressure on the regime and demand access for investigations on-the-ground in Iran. Khamenei and his regime must be stopped.”

Canada-based activist Hamed Esmaeilion, whose daughter and wife were killed by the IRGC, also decried the school attacks, calling on the international community and democratic governments not to remain silent. “Will you finally stand with the people of Iran and expel the Islamic Republic Ambassadors?” he asked.

In Vancouver, Canada, hundreds came out to demonstrate and call for global attention to chemical attacks on girls' schools around the country. A group of representatives of conservative parties and the New Democratic Party of Canada were also present at the demonstration.

In Toronto and Montreal similar protests were held seeing hundreds protest on a cold and snowy day in solidarity to condemn the poisoning of schoolgirls which began in the religious city of Qom in November.

In the US, Iranians living in San Diego, California, showed their solidarity with fellow countrymen by holding demonstrations and demanding an end to torture and oppression in Iran. Demonstrators also displayed a photo of Pirouz, the lost Iranian cheetah which died of kidney failure last week, three of the country's last of the endangered species.

Iranians living in Sydney, Munich, Hamburg, and Copenhagen held similar rallies.

Three months into the serial poisoning of students which have affected scores of girls' schools, it is believed over 1,000 students have been targeted with unknown numbers hospitalized around the country. No culprits have yet been found nor any answers as to the chemical agents being used.