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Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has purchased an investigation into a wave of reported sicknesses at girls’ schools across the country amid allegations by some that these are assaults in retaliation for college students and women of all ages leading anti-authorities protests sparked by the demise of a young lady while in police custody for allegedly sporting a head scarf improperly.

Speaking at a cabinet conference on March 1, Raisi assigned Inside Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli to head the probe just after hundreds of women have noted slipping unwell at college considering that November.

RFE/RL’s Radio Farda claimed that at the very least 26 schools have been afflicted by the crisis on March 1.

The 1st incident is believed to have happened in November, when 18 schoolgirls in the city of Qom were being taken to a medical center following complaining of signs and symptoms that bundled nausea, complications, coughing, respiration difficulties, coronary heart palpitations, and numbness and pain in their arms or legs.

It is unclear what may be causing the health problems, nevertheless some of those people affected have claimed they smelled chlorine or cleansing brokers, though others claimed they believed they smelled tangerines in the air.

“Referring to the fears made in relationship with the poisoning of a amount of students in some educational institutions, [the president] gave the Minister of the Interior a mission to observe up and locate the root of the problem as quickly as attainable, and to provide documented and continual information and facts about the effects of the abide by-ups,” the president’s business office reported in a assertion next the cabinet assembly.

Officers have only just lately admitted there may well be a issue, with parliament member Abdulali Rahimi Mozafari on February 28 calling on the speaker to buy an investigation into the subject.

That reticence has prompted some to accuse the federal government of purposely “poisoning” learners, who have been at the forefront of new anti-governing administration protests — the biggest risk to the Islamic management because the 1979 revolution.

Iran has been roiled by unrest considering the fact that the September 16 demise of 22-calendar year-previous Mahsa Amini while in law enforcement custody for allegedly carrying a hijab, or head scarf, improperly.

The govt director of the Middle for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) on February 28 accused the governing administration of “an act of terrorism” as a result of its failure to acquire the wave of ailments very seriously for months, raising “critical queries pertaining to federal government complicity with teams that have the organizational capability to carry out these types of main assaults.”

The CHRI did not present any proof to back again up its claim that learners had been poisoned, and it is unclear what is at the root of the disaster.

At the very least just one dying has been joined to the outbreak of ailments, the CHRI stated, but the girl’s father refused to ensure there was a link concerning her death and the alleged poisonings.

In the most up-to-date incident, two Iranian journalists described on social media on February 28 that a number of schoolgirls in Tehran and in Pardis, just east of the Iranian money, fell ill, with the trigger unidentified.

Some rights activists have accused Iranian authorities of seeking to suppress details about the loss of life of the female, although other individuals have accused the authorities of not undertaking plenty of to come across the cause of the outbreak of sickness and prevent new cases.

Some indignant moms and dads have refused to deliver their youngsters to faculty.

A trainer from Qom — which is about 135 kilometers south of the money Tehran — advised Radio Farda that out of 250 learners, about 200 missed courses, presumably from issues around the illnesses.

Meanwhile, some others have speculated that spiritual extremists, in a bid to generate fear and protect against ladies from attending school, could be guiding the incidents.

Earlier this week, top Iranian Sunni cleric Molavi Abdulhamid, who is regarded as a spiritual leader for Iran’s Sunni Muslim populace, mentioned schoolgirls ended up staying poisoned as “revenge” for the position youthful girls have played in new protests from the authorities.

Previous 7 days, Nafiseh Moradi, a researcher of Islamic experiments at Al Zahra University, an all-woman general public college in Tehran, claimed in a commentary that it was suspicious that women, not boys, ended up largely afflicted by the diseases. The posting on Qom News was later on deleted from its web-site.

The authorities has held a number of counterrallies to try and quell the dissent, but individuals proceed to consider to the streets across the state, as universities and colleges have turn into primary venues for clashes involving protesters and the authorities.

Stability forces have also introduced a collection of raids on educational facilities throughout the state, violently arresting college students, in particular feminine learners, who have defiantly taken off their hijabs in protest.

Prepared by Ardeshir Tayebi dependent on an original story in Persian by RFE/RL’s Radio Farda