PEN Centers Urge Iranian Regime To End Campaign Against Writers

Fatemeh Maghsoudi, representative of Boroujerd in the parliament, told the media Monday that attributing the poisonings to religious fundamentalists was “unfounded” but demanded shifting to online education until the mystery of the attacks is solved.

In a commentary published by Qom News on February 14, Nafiseh Moradi, an Islamic studies researcher at Tehran’s Al-Zahra University, speculated that the Taliban’s ban on girls’ education may have inspired the ultra-religious in Qom to carry out attacks on schools for girls to instill fear in students and their families with the aim of keeping them at home. The website was later blocked by the authorities for publishing the controversial claim.

Since then, many on social media have also attributed the school attacks to underground Shiite groups with beliefs similar to doomsday cults who are also infuriated by young female students’ anti-regime protests and refusal to wear the hijab.

Last week Attorney General Mohammad Javad Montazeri said in a letter to Qom prosecutor that the poisoning of students in Qom might be a “deliberate criminal act” and urged city officials to take decisive action in the case.

The first case which was reported in Qom on November 30 affected 18 students at a secondary school who fell ill with symptoms such as nausea, headaches, coughing, difficulty breathing, heart palpitations, and lethargy.

Poisonings, apparently by gas, were hushed for nearly two months but now they have spread to several other cities, particularly in Boroujerd, capital of the western Lorestan province, where several schools were hit in the past week.

Students of Ahmadieh High School in Boroujerd have said that something like a home-made bomb was thrown into the school yard that emitted a gas. Consequently, some of these students lost movement in their limbs and had to be hospitalized as were the school principal and her deputy.

Over a hundred were poisoned at 15 Khordad High School in the same city. There are reports of Tohid Middle School and Fereshtegan Primary being hit in Boroujerd in the past few days.

Isolated cases have also been reported, with very little detail, in Qazvin, and several other cities in different parts of the country.

Victims say they smelled something like bleach while others report smelling peppermint, bleach or rotten fruit before their symptoms emerged.

In response to claims on social media that Fatemeh Rezaei, an eleven-year-old girl, has died in Qom because of the poisonings, the state media on Sunday said the death of the schoolgirl in Qom had nothing to do with the school attacks.

The official news agency IRNA on Monday published an interview with the girl’s father who said the reports about his daughter’s death and its connection with the poisonings was fabricated by “anti-revolutionary media” based outside Iran. He said his daughter’s symptoms which led to her death from infection included leg pain, stomachache, vomiting and a temperature.

The interview reminded many of what is known to Iranians as “forced” confessions or statements.

Deputy education minister Younes Panahi said Sunday that the serial poisoning of female students in Qom and other cities were "intentional". "It was found that some people wanted all schools, especially girls' schools, to be closed." Later on the same day, he said he was misquoted about the incidents being “intentional poisonings”.

Panahi also insisted that the chemical compounds used to poison students were not of weapons-grade chemicals used in chemical wars and that aggressive treatments were not required for the symptoms that students have been suffering from.

In a statement released on Monday, Amnesty International urged all states whose nationals are or have been detained at any point in Iran to promptly examine whether the deprivation of liberty amounts to an act of hostage-taking, and if so, take all appropriate measures to ensure accountability.

“He is held in solitary confinement in a windowless basement cell and is denied access to adequate healthcare and fresh air,” added Amnesty.

Additionally, his family and lawyer, as well as Belgian consular authorities, are unaware of his exact whereabouts.

Amnesty has warned that the Islamic Republic of Iran has kept this Belgian citizen as a "hostage" to exchange him with Asadollah Asadi, an Iranian diplomat.

Asadi has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for “attempted murder and involvement in terrorism” for his role in plotting to bomb a gathering of the MEK near Paris in 2018.

On 10 January 2023, Iranian state media announced that Vandecasteele was sentenced to 40 years in prison and 74 lashes, amidst indications that the Iranian authorities are holding him hostage to compel Belgian authorities to swap him for a former Iranian official imprisoned in Belgium.

Currently, at least 16 foreign citizens, most of whom dual nationals, are detained in the prisons of the Islamic Republic.

In remarks in the southern city of Abadan on Monday, the IRGC commander Hossein Salami said Europe is a pioneer in imposing sanctions against the Iranian people, and European countries have become a place for gatherings of “anti-Iranian separatists and fugitives”.

“We have the ability to increase the range of weapons and strike them seriously, but we have not yet done so,” he added.

“We warn them. The lives of Europeans depend on oil and security, and they should be careful and not endanger themselves.”

Elsewhere in his remarks, Salami stated that Westerners have done everything they could against Iran, but they must know that “we have found our way and our will is to create security, but the Europeans should be careful and not abuse our [kind] behavior.”

The threats by Salami come in a situation that EU officials are still hesitant to designate the IRGC as a terrorist group.

EU Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell has said the European Union cannot list Iran's IRGC as a terrorist entity until an EU court has determined that they are.

The European Parliament has called on the EU to list the Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist entity, blaming it for the repression of domestic protests and the supply of drones to Russia.

The IRIS Makran and IRIS Dena warships both arrived on Sunday morning, Rio's port authority said in a statement.

Reuters earlier this month reported that Brazil had bowed to US pressure and declined Iran's request for the vessels to dock in Rio in late January, in a gesture from Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva as he flew to Washington to meet US President Joe Biden.

However, with Lula's trip over, the ships have been allowed to dock. Vice Admiral Carlos Eduardo Horta Arentz, the deputy chief of Brazil's Naval Staff, gave his approval for the ships to dock in Rio between February 26 and March 4.

The presence of the Iranian warships on Brazilian shores continues to irk the United States as it seeks to build closer ties with Lula's administration, which came into office on January 1.

In a February 15 press conference, US Ambassador Elizabeth Bagley urged Brazil not to allow the ships to dock.

"In the past, those ships facilitated illegal trade and terrorist activities, and have also been sanctioned by the United States. Brazil is a sovereign nation, but we firmly believe those ships should not dock anywhere," she said.

Diplomacy with Iran was one of the highlights of Lula's attempts to bolster Brazil's international standing during his previous presidential terms. He traveled to Tehran to meet then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2010 as he sought to broker a nuclear deal between Iran and the United States.

Many seats were empty while Hossein-Amir Abdollahian was delivering his speech at UHRC’s headquarters in Geneva, following calls by activists urging delegates to walk out in reaction to the regime’s gross human rights violations, especially during the ongoing crackdown on antigovernment protests. 

The current session of the council, made up of 47 member countries, will last for more than five weeks and is set to tackle an extensive array of human rights issues, including discrimination and freedom of religion, both major issues in Iran.

The council was one of the first international bodies to react to the current wave of protests, ignited by the death of Mahsa Amini in custody of hijab police. In November, the council voted to launch an independent investigation into the regime’s deadly repression, which has killed more than 500 civilians, including 70 children. 

Most participants who left the hall in protest to Amir-Abdollahian's presence were members of NGOs as most diplomats preferred to stay and listen to the Islamic Republic’s rhetoric.

Trying to manipulate the realities on the ground, the Iranian FM said, “The peaceful assemblies that took place in my country following the sad death of Mahsa Amini... turned violent following the malign interference by some terrorist elements. In this respect, a number of Persian language TV channels based in the US and the UK, acted as provocateurs of hatred and propagators of violence.” 

He also claimed that an investigation was ongoing and that all the people that were arrested during the protests have been released. He also claimed that "no one has been killed," in response to Iran International’s correspondent who asked him about the Islamic Republic's killing of protesters including a 10-year-old kid. 

Outraged by Amir-Abdollahian's presence, many politicians and activists expressed concern about the UN’s move to invite the Iranian official for the opening day of the five-week session. Member of the Swedish parliament, Alireza Akhondi, said, “It’s a shameful day for the UN that they allowed representatives for a murderous regime to speak here about human rights.” 

“I’m expecting that they (the UN) are redrawing their badges and they are not allowing them to enter this building anymore. Because they are not respecting the human rights of anybody and they are trying to harass and make the Iranian voices to not be able to be heard,” he added. 

The foreign minister’s presence was not the only issue of contention among Iranian and foreign activists as he also held several meetings on the sidelines of the UN session, such as a meeting with the UN Secretary-General António Guterres, Belgian Foreign Minister Hadja Lahbib and Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto. 

The meetings shocked social media users, especially because Lahbib cut their hair in the country’s parliament in solidarity with anti-government demonstrations. Her meeting was criticized by many activists and officials, including Belgian lawmaker Darya Safai, who pointed out that “The Belgian government goes along with hostage diplomacy.” Lahbib herself tweeted about the release of Olivier Vandecasteele, an aid worker and a former employee of the Norwegian Refugee Council sentenced to 40 years in prison in Iran. Some believe her meeting with Amir-Abdollahian was probably an attempt to plead for his release.