In interviews with the Post in recent weeks, three students and two parents described attacks on schools. Teachers are under pressure to suppress any signs of dissent and are often powerless to prevent security forces from targeting protected minors.Attendance sheets, report cards, and security cameras as tools of repression. Parents are warned to supervise their children.
The Iranian interviewed for this article spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of backlash from the government, which has punished people for communicating with foreign journalists. The Post was unable to independently verify their accounts, but reflected reports from human rights groups and other international and local media.
“We are all in shock and grief and have no energy to do anything,” said a 12-year-old Tehran boy who was sent to Washington after plainclothes police raided his school to arrest a classmate this month. He told the Post that he physically intervened with classmates and teachers to stop the abductions.
Authorities have declined to say how many children they have arrested, but a deputy to the Revolutionary Guard said on Oct. 5 that the average age of the children was Only 15 “rioters” were arrested. Iran’s Education Minister Yousef Nouri said on Oct. 11 that an undisclosed number of children were being held in “psychological centers” for reform and re-education. Activists and lawyers told the Post that at least 700 teenagers had been detained.
“We don’t know where they are taking these children or what is happening to them. [in detention]’ said Mahmoud Amily Moghadam, director of the Norway-based Iranian Human Rights Organization. “Sometimes these children are beaten and taken away in plain clothes. [police]”
There have been repeated reports of the presence of armed security forces in the Kurdish city of Bukan in the northwest. admission When Demanding security footageIn the capital Tehran, parents gathered outside a school as plainclothes police reportedly raided their homes.
Iran’s longest-running demonstrations in decades were sparked in mid-September by the death of Martha Amini, a young Iranian Kurdish woman detained by the hated “morality police”.with women Since then, girls have played a leading role in the protests.
Hossein Raishi, a human rights professor at Carleton University in Ottawa, said, “Since high schools and girls became involved in protests in Iran, the government has become very sensitive to the situation.” I tried to keep quiet about it, but I tried to suppress it to suppress it.”
While patterns of abuse are emerging, pressure on families to remain silent and restrictions on internet and cell phone access make cases difficult to document and verify.
15-year-old Ethra Panahi, from the northwest city of Ardabil, was reportedly killed by security forces while at school, according to Shiva Amelirad, international spokesperson for the Canada-based Teachers Syndicate Coordinating Council. believed to be the first minor to be teachers union.
Esra was beaten to death by plainclothes police on October 12. That morning, at the pro-government rally he was ordered to attend, after Esra and his other classmates shouted “death to the dictator” and “women, freedom for life.” Other girls were wounded and detained.
The Post was unable to independently verify the Syndicate’s account.
But when the story began to circulate, Esra’s brother told Iranian state television that his sister had died of heart problems. Rights groups say authorities often pressure relatives of the dead and detainees to make false statements.
According to Amelirad, days after Esra’s death, her brother attempted suicide and was hospitalized. The Post was unable to determine his current condition.
Minors are being killed at alarming rates, especially in Iran’s Kurdish minority and the Baluchi region. Iranian human rights activists, a Washington-based group, said Monday they had confirmed 121 deaths, 46 of them under the age of 18.
More deaths may go undocumented as families fear and intimidate into silence taking their children to the hospital. Some were even forced to sign forged death certificates in order to retrieve the bodies of their children, according to Amily Moghadam.
Raisi, who worked as a human rights lawyer in Iran for 20 years, said the Ministry of Information and the Intelligence Division of the Revolutionary Guards Corps supervise minors detained above the law. It falls outside the standards of rights for children in custody,” he said.
The juvenile correction center resembles a “brainwashing” site, Raisi said. Children are forced to sign guilt statements and pledge allegiance to their nation. “They are putting pressure on them and causing them psychological distress,” he said.
Amelirad said he spoke directly to boys aged 15 and 17 who were arrested in separate cases outside the same school in western Iran. After class, they both took off their hijabs. The children were held in close-packed cells for several days, interrogated and beaten before being fined and released, she said.
“They asked if anyone in the West tried to force them to protest,” she said. “They told them their lives were over.”
The Coordinating Council of Teachers Syndicates actively organizes school strikes and publishes reports of attacks against children and teachers.
A 17-year-old girl from Mashhad, northeastern Iran, told the Post that her school has allowed long nails, fringes and hair dyeing in recent years. But after the protests began, a new principal came along, imposing a strict dress code, punishing girls with loose headscarves and forcing her students to pray.
A 17-year-old boy said a woman in conservative clothing with a rosary began walking around the school and taking videos of students shouting protest chants. Schools began organizing day trips and other events to distract students who were told they would do poorly if they didn’t attend.
A teenage girl said she occasionally participated in chanting slogans but was too afraid to speak up.
“They will smile in your face and say nothing when you protest, but they will take a video and betray you behind your back,” she said of the principal and teachers.
A 14-year-old girl from Tehran said she and her classmates only spoke privately about the protests.They worry that teachers have Recruited other students to spy on them. According to her, police came in mid-October to check whether the students stole a photo of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei from her textbooks.
She said that amid calls for a school boycott, school administrators warned that students who were absent for more than a week would have points deducted.
A 12-year-old Tehran boy vowed that police would return later to take the child after a school rallied to prevent police from arresting his classmate.
The principal smuggled the student out and took him home in a taxi. A 12-year-old boy said teachers had gathered at the front gate to prevent police from re-entering.
His mother, a 45-year-old painter, is terrified about her son’s mental health and future. rice field none Once they leave the premises.
Manije Moradian, an assistant professor at Barnard College, said targeting schoolchildren “has lost a great deal of credibility in the regime.” “It’s getting harder and harder to defend a government that attacks its own students.”
