Iran Pleads 'Innocent' Over Schoolgirls’ Serial Poisonings

Iranian Minister of Information and Communications Technology Issa Zarepour said Friday that there is no accurate data regarding the damage from internet access restrictions. However, independent VPN review website Top10VPN said in its annual that the economic impact was about $773 million in 2022.

While in dollars this might not appear to be a staggering figure, in local currency it is hundreds of trillions of rials and a huge loss for an economy straddled by US sanctions, inefficiency and corruption.

As nationwide anti-regime protests began in September, the government started to disrupt access to the internet to prevent news about the unrest being disseminated both inside the country and abroad. It also aimed at preventing protesters from communicating with each other. Internet disruption lasted for weeks.

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Intermittent disruption have continued in 2023, mostly coinciding with protests. The latest one occurred on March 7, as Iranians were holding a nationwide rally to protest the regime's inaction or possible involvement in the face of poisonous gas attacks on schoolgirls in recent months. 

Drawing widespread criticism on social media, Zarepour, however, rejected the estimates by the company – and any other foreign source for that matter – saying that "there have been dozens of assessments by foreign sources that cannot be relied upon." He added that the Islamic Republic itself has not done any evaluation over the losses caused by the Internet restrictions. 

Earlier in the month, Statista -- an online platform specialized in market and consumer data – said Iran’s blocking access to social media sites and news outlets was second only to Russia in 2022, affecting almost 72 million people

A report released in January said that due to extensive internet and social network restrictions, 20 percent of people lost their online jobs in the last four months of the previous year. According to Jobvision website, 46 percent of organizations suspended or postponed more than half of their recruitment programs due to the recent internet restrictions, and 45% of companies or businesses that depend on the Internet have decided to reduce their payments or had to pay wages by delay.

The computer trade union of Tehran -- or Tehran ICT Guild Organization -- announced in November that almost half of the Internet service providers in had seen a 50-percent drop in sales due to disruptions, censorship, and Internet shutdowns during the protests. The union's secretary Alireza Keshavarz Jamshidian went on to say that about half of the Internet providers lost over 500 million rials (around $1,400) a day, as sales dropped. However, he added, one-fifth of the companies say they suffered between $2,800 and $14,000 loss a day. 

Curfew-style shut down of the internet has a highly damaging impact on several industries including food, medicine, and steel production, especially on small businesses and farmers. The E-Commerce Association in Tehran announced last year that the internet shutdown costs Iran $1.5 million per hour.

Despite all the losses due to the government restrictions, the cash-strapped administration of Ebrahim Raisi has issued a new decree to collect eight percent royalty fee from video call services of mobile operators in the country.

The report by the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) states that during the 12 months, 29,688 people were arrested in Iran, of which 28,419 were detained for exercising their rights free expression.

328 women's rights activists, 258 trade union activists, 235 ethnic minorities and 169 people of religious minorities were also among the detainees, according to the report.

Iran’s chief judge announced March 13 that 22,000 people arrested during recent protests were "pardoned" and released in the past 6 months but he declined to mention the total number of people arrested.

In the reporting period, the public and Revolutionary Courts across Iran opened 1,075 legal cases against defendants facing political and national security charges, added the report, saying that the courts issued a combined total of 31,164 months in prison and 2,507 months of suspended jail terms.

HRANA also has described the last Iranian year a difficult one for women, reporting that at least 39 women were murder victims of domestic violence while 11 others were beaten, assaulted and injured by the morality police or religious vigilantes imposing so-called proper hijab in the public.

This was the third time in the past month that disabled people and managers of rehabilitation centers have protested to hardships and the government's failure to pay pensions.

According to reports, the security officers tore the banners held by protesters and beat them up while they were chanting slogans to press for assistance that should have been paid earlier.

It came after the Supreme Association for the Rehabilitation of the Disabled, the Center for Positive Life and the Campaign for the Disabled issued a joint call for a sit-in in front of the organization on Saturday.

Similar protest gatherings were staged in other cities in the past weeks. On March 2, a group of people with disabilities in Mashhad gathered outside the local Rehabilitation Department to protest inattention to their demands.

Amid a vast range of economic and social crises, the people with disabilities are quickly becoming the most voiceless minority in Iran and are increasingly being pushed to the margins.

In 2021, the Ministry of Labor published a report saying that out of a population of 80 million in Iran, there are more than 1.7 million people with disabilities who require additional help.

The teenage girls filmed themselves on March 8 while they were dancing to "Calm Down" by Selena Gomez and Nigerian singer Rema outside an apartment building in Tehran’s Ekbatan neighborhood.

The teenage girls recorded themselves without hijab and posted it on TikTok, but Iranian security forces detained them for 48 hours. Their act was clearly meant to defy the government that forbids dancing and singing by women, specially without hijab.

The girls were then forced to record another video repenting of their actions while their heads were covered with headscarves.

Selena Gomez with 400 million followers on Instagram published a picture of these five young girls on Friday saying “[love] to these young women and all the women of Iran who continue to be courageous demanding fundamental change. Please know your strength is inspiring.”

Earlier, Nigerian singer Rema, who remixed “Calm Down” song by Gomez also reacted to the detention of the girls.

The 21-year-old Afropop star said he was inspired by the young girls and other Iranian women who strive for a better world.

“To all the beautiful women who are fighting for a better world, I’m inspired by you, I sing for you, and I dream with you,” Rema wrote in a tweet.

The immediate action of the Islamic Republic to arrest the "girls of Ekbatan" angered many Iranians, prompting them to record similar videos while dancing to the song to support the teenage girls.

Like in the previous weeks, Mowlavi Abdolahamid delivered a moving Friday sermon, saying that a single ideology cannot and should not be the only dominant view in the country. "One ethnic group and one religion cannot rule the country,” he stated. 

Iran is ruled by Shiite Islamic sect ideology and clerics since the 1979 revolution that toppled the monarchy.

Decrying the domination of a single religious view in the country as the cause of Iran's political deadlock, Abdolhamid said that “Iran is a rainbow of ethnicities, religions and pluralities,” suppressed by the ruling religious view for the past 44 years. The Islamic Republic has not been able to establish equality and balance among such a variety of views while ideas have failed the nation.

Implicitly calling for a secular democracy, Abdolhamid said that the Islamic Republic has limited the Iran’s potential with its narrow interpretation of religion in governing the country. 

He said that the regime has prevented meritocracy by preventing people of other ideologies from acquiring positions and important roles in the government. He pointed out that Sunni Iranians have no significant role in the judiciary and administration even at local level. 

“Our dear Shia friends also complain about such discrimination, saying that that qualified individuals, who are not very committed to religious practices but are capable academics, thinkers and worthy managers have been discriminated against,” he added. 

He emphasized that the "rainbow" is the right metaphor for the diversities in Iran, denouncing the dominant religious ideology for not creating equality for other ideas. 

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"Today, a military and security point of view prevails throughout Iran, but no country whose ruling point of view is security and military will develop," he said. The view of the government should be comprehensive and national, not religious, because the religious view will fail, he noted. 

Comparing the current value of the national currency with that of the Pahlavi era before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, he criticized the narrow and religious view of the ruling power of the country that has damaged the principles of Islam in the country.

The Iranian rial has dropped from 70 against the US dollar in 1979 to 470,000 currently. 

He condemned "torture, beating, killing and violation of people's rights," saying that the oppression of others is "worse than polytheism and disbelief.”

"The presence of police officers in the streets should be avoided,” he added. “In many countries, when security is high, there is no need for a visible police presence since the people's general trust in the government is strong."

Activists reported a large presence of security forces in the restive city as hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets, chanting "Freedom, Freedom, Freedom," "We don’t want the Islamic Republic" and "Political prisoners must be released."

Zahedan is the provincial capital of Sistan-Baluchestan Province, home to Iran's Sunni Baluch minority of up to two million people.

Residents have been holding protest rallies every Friday since September 30 when security forces killed nearly 90 people, in the deadliest incident so far in the nationwide demonstrations triggered by the September death in custody of a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini.