State violence against women has shifted from suppression of representing bodies and their hairs in public space to endangering their lives via chemical attack by poisoning while they are at schools. Young women as decision makers and engine forces of the current revolution are the direct target by the fascist, terrorist and Islamist hardliners now. After seven-month fighting in the streets with Hijab forces, security and police forces, young woman revolutionaries recently have begun new collective dancing movements in different cities.
This entered us into a new phase of the revolution. Unknown terrorist actors of the state organized chemical attack and poisoning the school girls, a few school boys as well as female university student dormitories in more than 28 provinces -mainly in many urban and some rural areas. This is absolutely unjust battle in addition to ongoing arresting, torturing the youth particularly in Khuzestan (southwest), Kurdistan (northwest) and Baluchistan (southeast).
They use chemical-type strategy against women that paralyses women’s nerving system, and respiratory system that might have longer effects in general on their health system. So far, one girl in Qom and one boy in Kamyaran (Kurdistan) died because of poisoning. Many other students are under medical treatment, some are suffering from paralyzed legs. This brought serious concern among school teachers’ unions, the higher education faculty bodies, workers of different sectors, parents of schools’ children and women activists, and took them to the streets.
The poisoning attack in Kurdistan took recently the locals to the streets, and the local shops have gone on strikes. More than three hundred schools and more than thirteen thousand school children were poisoned in more than four months in the whole nation.
The state officials and the board of education do not take any responsibility to stop the attacks. Instead, controlling and threatening of school children on their daily civil disobedience and removing their hijab have increased. The families of children view this new hostile strategy against their children coming from the state level: “Our daughters chanted slogans of ‘Zan Zendegi Azadi’ at school the day before the chemical attack, and the state is punishing them by poisoning them, now.” According to some accounts in the city of Qom -where the chemical attack took place three months earlier than any other places- , “Once we brought our daughters to hospital, the security forces poured in the hospital and prevented us from contacting with the nurses and medical doctors. The security forces arranged a scene along with a fake medical doctor to have an interview with the state journalist to speak of the health status of our daughters in front of the cameras and left afterward. The security forces control all the hospitals’ staff, and pay the cleaners to report and control on the families’ presence in the hospital as well as the rest of medical staff. The securities would not let the families follow the blood exams.”
These attacks paused during Nowruz holidays and spring break for two weeks. Right after holidays, the schools opened and the chemical attack begun again. Moreover, there has been an attack by Islamists’ Taliban at the schools in Afghanistan in the last week. Taliban put some of the schools on fire.
No international human rights organizations have taken action to investigate these crimes against children. There should be an urgent call from international communities to take action in solidarity with the children under attack by Islamists and hardliners in Iran as well as their fellow criminal in Afghanistan. Otherwise, the networks of the criminals will come to you even on global level, if the international communities compromise with these attacks.
