Tehran (EFE)
“The designers of the hybrid war against Iran have tried to create discontent with mental and psychological contamination,” the Interior Ministry said in a statement after midnight.
“They are trying to cause the closure of the country’s education and science centers and to revive the failed project of the riots,” the statement added, referring to the protests that broke out in September over the death of Amini after she was detained for not wear the veil well.
The Government of Iran accused Western countries of promoting these protests with a markedly feminist tone with the aim of causing regime change in the Islamic Republic.
State repression has managed to appease these protests, in which almost 500 people have died and for which four protesters have been hanged.
The wave of alleged gas poisonings at women’s educational institutions began in November in the Shi’ite holy city of Qom and has multiplied in recent days.
More than a thousand students poisoned
So far, more than 1,000 female students have been poisoned in dozens of schools and institutes and have suffered headaches, palpitations, nausea, dizziness and sometimes the inability to move their extremities after perceiving a smell of rotten orange and cleaning products.
The latest cases occurred yesterday in the cities of Kavar, Urmia, Zanjan, Hamedan, Kabudarahang, Karaj, Tabriz, Basmanj, Stardadashi and Tehran, according to the cases confirmed by the authorities.
Groups of activists affirmed that around fifty women’s centers suffered gas attacks yesterday.
The Ministry of the Interior indicated in the statement that they have found “suspicious samples” in some female educational centers, which are being analyzed in “prestigious laboratories” to identify the cause of the poisoning.
According to data from the portfolio, there have been gas attacks in 52 schools, an unknown number of female students were intoxicated and 28 students have been hospitalized, figures that are far from those provided by activist groups.
The attacks are fueling popular discontent, especially among parents, given the ineffectiveness of the authorities in stopping attacks that seem destined to paralyze the education of the students.
Videos shared by activist groups have shown small protests and demonstrations by parents in front of schools and government education offices to express their concern about the situation.
“Death to the government that murders children”, shouted a group of parents in front of a school in Tehran, in a scene that has been repeated in other centers, according to videos by activists.
In Iran, female education has not been questioned in the 43 years of the Islamic Republic’s existence and some parents link the poisonings to the protests.
The students of schools and institutes participated in these protests, took off their veils, shouted “woman, life, freedom” and cut their sleeves to portraits of the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, and Ayatollah Ruholá Khomeini.
