The European parliament has adopted a resolution calling on the UN Human Rights Council to conduct an independent probe into a wave of chemical attacks on Iranian schoolgirls.
The motion, which passed by 516 votes in favor, five against and 14 abstentions on Thursday, vehemently condemned “this atrocious attempt to silence women and girls in Iran,” and expressed “its deep solidarity with the Iranian students poisoned in the incidents and with their families.”
According to reports by state media and Iranian officials, more than 1,300 pupils, mostly girls, have fallen ill after "suspected poisonings'', with some politicians blaming religious groups opposed to girls’ education. Some activists have accused the regime of orchestrating the poisonings as revenge for the active role by schoolgirls in the protests ignited by the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini last September.
Urging authorities to ensure girls have non-discriminatory access to education, MEPs called on the Islamic Republic to repeal any legislation that discriminates against girls and women, saying that since the wave of attacks started in November 2022, thousands of girls and women across Iran have been poisoned with toxic chemicals to prevent them from attending school.
It called on the Iranian authorities to grant full access to the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission and the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Reiterating its condemnation of “the regime’s anti-women and anti-girls policies,” the European Parliament reaffirmed “its absolute support for Iranian women’s and girls’ demand to abolish all systemic discrimination.”
The resolution also decried the regime’s months-long failure to act on the serial poisonings, as well as its deliberate suppression of credible reports of systematic toxic attacks. Denouncing any politically motivated legal proceedings against those reporting on the poisonings, the resolution called for the immediate unconditional release of all those imprisoned or prosecuted.
The parliament also repeated its call on the Council of Europe to designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – IRGC -- as a terrorist organization and to expand the EU sanctions list under the EU Global Human Rights sanctions mechanisms to include Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, President Ebrahim Raisi, and Prosecutor General Mohammad Jafar Montazeri for their role in rights violations.
The nine-point resolution also urged EU member states to facilitate the issuance of visas, asylum and emergency grants to those who need to leave Iran, "particularly women and girls". However, a point that was included in the proposed resolution but did not pass was a call “for the European institutions to reflect on the deeply rooted protest movement of Iranian women.” It sought to urge Europe to acknowledge “that this movement goes beyond the defense of women’s rights, advocating for a democratic state in Iran instead of a violent and reactionary theocracy.”
The Iranian government, police and judiciary have not issued a transparent and definitive report on the chemical attacks, vaguely claiming that dozens of arrests were made, without any sign of court action against alleged perpetrators.
Bijan Nobaveh, Tehran's representative and a deputy at the cultural committee, admitted that as protests show no signs of abating, more repressive measures are ahead, with the approval of the administration and judiciary.
Increased state-wide surveillance will add further oppression to the country’s suffering population. “Identification of women without hijab in public spaces will be done through surveillance cameras, and punishment will be done according to the prepared tables [guidelines],” he said, though this is widely done already.
Women seen in public without their Islamic headscarf, required under regime law, have been seen multiple times being beaten by brutal security forces.
Further crackdowns to communications are set to come too, after months of internet shutdowns have blighted the country, including millions of women working from home who are now forced back into poverty. New punishments tabled include blocking mobile phones and internet of women who appear in public without hijab.
The announcement this week also reiterated threats against owners and operators of shops, malls and tourist attractions who do not confront women without headscarves. The Islamic Republic has closed down several businesses in the heavily touristic cities of Esfahan (Isfahan) and Kashan as well as in the capital Tehran in recent days, demanding management not allow access for uncovered women.
It is not yet clear how much money the regime, which is already bankrupt, is going to spend on the necessary technologies for such measures.
The new crackdowns come as no surprise. Before the unrest which began in September, triggered by the death in morality police custody of Mahsa Amini, there has long been talk of using cameras to identify women flouting the mandatory hijab rules, part of efforts by President Ebrahim Raisi’s hardliner administration to intensify pressures on women in society throughout the year.
In December, another member of parliament’s cultural committee, Hossein Jalali, said that hijab enforcement will never be abolished, ensuring that “veils will be back on women’s heads within two weeks.” Confirming that the regime is making some changes in enforcing hijab rules, he added that “it is possible that women who do not observe hijab would be informed via SMS, asking them to respect the law. After notifying them, we enter the warning stage... and in the third stage, the bank account of the person who unveiled may be blocked."
Iranian women appearing in public without headscarves has become a common sight across the country. Celebrities keep publishing photos and videos of themselves defying the regime and scuffles with security forces are still seen across social media on a daily basis.
While some politicians have demanded an end to compulsory hijab and laws that legalize discrimination against women, there are many others who have been talking about new methods and punishments to enforce hijab.
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei delivered an ambivalent speech about hijab in January, saying hijab is an inevitable duty for all Muslim women, but no Iranian woman should be labeled as non-religious if she fails to fully honor the Islamic dress code.
The Islamic Republic faces a dilemma. Allowing people to wear whatever they desire in public means the utmost failure of the regime's ideology, while enforcing hijab with strict punitive measures can only lead to further resentment in society.
Protests seems to have resulted in police being unable to confront the large number of women unveiling in public with its usual ferocity and the regime’s hardliners are worried that warmer weather in spring and summer would lead to more women defying the country’s strict hijab rules.
Firebrand Cleric Ahmad Alamolhoda -- who is President Ebrahim Raisi's father-in-law -- said earlier in the month that “the regime is no longer powerful enough to stand against women who defy compulsory hijab,”. Imam Mohammad-Nabi Mousavifard also said in February that the authorities should approve new laws to deal with women who do not observe hijab “otherwise women will come to the street naked this summer”.
On Tuesday evening, hours after the parliament session on enforcing the hijab, thousands of young Iranians took to the streets in several cities, dancing with their hair flowing freely and burning headscarves and photos of Khamenei. They came out to mark the ancient Iranian annual fire festival and used the occasion to vent their anger at security forces.
The international human rights organization has conducted research into the repressive measures Iranian intelligence and security forces have used against children in the six months since protests erupted in Iran.
“The research exposes the torture methods that the Revolutionary Guards, the paramilitary Basij, the Public Security Police and other security and intelligence forces used against boys and girls in custody to punish and humiliate them” and to extract forced “confessions,” Amnesty said.
At the height of the protests in from October to December last year, almost daily reports and videos from Iran revealed many cases of children being arrested, tortured, and dozens who were killed or blinded by gunfire. But the report released Thursday is based on a systematic collection of evidence and testimonies from victims and families, implicating the Iranian government in violence against children.
“Iranian state agents have torn children away from their families and subjected them to unfathomable cruelties. It is abhorrent that officials have wielded such power in a criminal manner over vulnerable and frightened children, inflicting severe pain and anguish upon them and their families…This violence against children exposes a deliberate strategy to crush the vibrant spirit of the country’s youth and stop them from demanding freedom and human rights,” said Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa.
The report also said that although the government has not released a breakdown of the 22,000 protesters it says it arrested, a significant portion of demonstrators were children. Many have been held alongside adults, Amnesty said, which is a violation of international standards. They were “subjected to the same patterns of torture and other ill-treatment.”
Amnesty International also said that its investigation revealed “that state agents used rape and other sexual violence, including electric shocks to genitals, touching genitals, and rape threats as a weapon against child detainees to break their spirits, humiliate and punish them, and/or extract ‘confessions.’ This pattern is also widely reported by adult women and men detainees.”
Cruel treatment of children also included detention in inhumane conditions, including extreme overcrowding, poor access to toilets, insufficient food and water, exposure to extreme cold and solitary confinement, Amnesty said.
The United Nations launched an investigative and fact-finding mission in November tasked with looking into all the reports and evidence of severe rights violation by the Islamic Republic. The members of the team were appointed in December.
The UN Human Rights Council announced that President Federico Villegas has appointed Sara Hossain of Bangladesh as the chair of the mission. Shaheen Sardar Ali of Pakistan and Viviana Krsticevic of Argentina are the two other members of the mission.
“The authorities must immediately release all children detained solely for peacefully protesting. With no prospect of effective impartial investigations into the torture of children domestically, we call on all states to exercise universal jurisdiction over Iranian officials, including those with command or superior responsibility, reasonably suspected of criminal responsibility for crimes under international law, including the torture of child protesters,” Amnesty demanded.