UN company urges probe of schoolgirl poisonings in Iran

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The U.N. cultural company on Wednesday expressed concern concerning the suspected poisoning of 1000’s of schoolgirls throughout Iran and known as for investigations.

Thousands of students across hundreds of mostly girls’ schools have reported being sickened by poisonous fumes in incidents going again to November. There have been no fatalities.

It stays unclear what chemical might need been used, if any. Nobody has claimed the assaults and authorities haven’t recognized any suspects. Not like neighboring Afghanistan, Iran has no historical past of non secular extremists concentrating on women’ schooling.

UNESCO “urges thorough investigations and fast actions to guard colleges and facilitate the return of affected college students,” the company tweeted.

“I’m deeply involved concerning the reported poisoning of schoolgirls in Iran over the previous three months. This can be a violation of their proper to secure schooling,” UNESCO head Audrey Azoulay stated.

Iranian officers say they’re investigating the incidents, and Supreme Chief Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has known as for anybody discovered accountable to be severely punished.

However authorities have additionally additional tightened restrictions on impartial media, arresting journalists, activists and others for talking concerning the alleged poisonings. That has made it troublesome to find out the scope and nature of the disaster.

Iran was already closely proscribing media amid waves of anti-government protests in current months that have been sparked by the September dying of a younger girl who was detained by the morality police. Iran’s clerical rulers drive girls to decorate conservatively and canopy their hair in public however have by no means objected to girls’s and women’ schooling.

Some Iranian officers have steered, with out proof, that the protests and the allegations of poisoning are a part of a overseas conspiracy to foment unrest. Movies circulated on-line appeared to point out lecturers protesting over the suspected poisonings in a number of cities on Tuesday.

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Iran’s Inside Ministry in the meantime introduced arrests in six provinces linked to the suspected poisonings. However its assertion targeted on a person accused of creating a video that was despatched to “hostile media” and stated three others have been lively in current protests.

Iran has described a number of the alleged poisonings as episodes of “hysteria.”

The World Well being Group documented an identical phenomenon in Afghanistan from 2009 to 2012, when lots of of ladies throughout the nation complained of unusual smells and poisoning. No proof was discovered to help the suspicions, and WHO stated it seemed to be a “mass psychogenic sickness.”