How could thousands of schoolgirls in Iran have been poisoned by gas in their classrooms?

Why would anyone want to poison thousands of innocent schoolgirls with gas? Dabrina Bet-Tamraz grew up a Christian and a woman in Iran. She thinks she knows the answer…

The first time I encountered Iran’s notorious morality oolice, I was only seven years old. The police stopped my mum and me on the street and told her that I should be wearing a proper hijab. Despite my mother’s argument that I was only seven, the man insisted that I looked older and would bring other men into temptation if I didn’t wear a scarf.  

When I was 16, I was arrested for wearing bright nail polish (it was brown). I argued that: I am not a Muslim so wearing nail varnish doesn't inhibit me from worshipping my God, but this was dismissed. This was an assault on my freedom as a woman, but it was also a way of making me behave in accordance with religious perspectives which I didn’t share.

I witnessed a friend coming to school with cuts all over her lips. In tears, she told us that she was forced to wipe away her lipstick with cotton filled with razor blades. Another schoolmate was forced to put her feet in a bucket filled with cockroaches for almost an hour. We grew up doing everything we could to avoid getting caught by the morality police, even if we were properly dressed. 

I have been stopped so many times by them. Offences included the colour of my jacket, because my scarf wasn’t properly covering all my hair, or simply for walking down the street with my brother. They would only let us go if we could offer proof that we were siblings. 

We grew up to expect such treatments and we got used to it all. We learned to accept it as normality.

But what Iranian girls are experiencing today is not normal. It is the fear that cowardly, nameless men, might gas us. I struggle to understand the gas poisoning of more than 1,000 schoolgirls in their classrooms, where they should have been safe and free to learn. How can this be?

Dabrina Bet-Tamraz has been stopped many times by Iran’s notorious morality police. Offences include the colour of her jacket.

It is almost as if someone wants to create maximum fear and maximum terror.

The truth is that, this regime has got away with so many brutal actions for far too long. It has made it its signature to attack, to rape, to kill with impunity.

The authorities have responded violently to the peaceful demonstrations where Iranians are calling for ‘women, life, freedom’. They have been beating and shooting people on the streets. Arresting and imprisoning protesters, conducting court hearings without giving defendants access to a lawyer, and issuing harsh sentences, including, in some cases, the death sentence. The executions have already begun.  

Since the green movement in 2009, we have seen the police driving over people on the streets, shooting people, even people who were not participating in a protest like my childhood friend Ashoor Kalda who was shot dead in his car. And now, it seems, casually poisoning schoolgirls. Why not? Who will dare to keep them accountable?  

 For 44 years, the Iranian regime has failed to uphold the right to freedom of religion despite having signed both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the binding International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) which Iran ratified in 1975. These covenants compel Iran to provide total religious freedom for its citizens, including the right to change one’s beliefs and to share those beliefs with others.

As a Christian we have become used to persecution. For me personally, it was normal to face discrimination and mistreatment. It became normal for my father to be arrested, interrogated, and terrorised. It became normal for the Ministry of Intelligence officers to follow us wherever we went or to occasionally break into our home.

I was in car accidents twice, after which the officers would call me and kindly remind me that the next accident would not be so harmless. 

Being called into their offices and questioned on a weekly basis started to become routine. I would be contacted every Sunday and taken every Tuesday for interrogations. I was threatened with torture, imprisonment, and even execution. As a woman I was also threatened with rape.

In 2009, no one thought that the government would close down all our churches and arrest my family and other pastors. No one thought they could get away with persecuting Assyrian and Armenian leaders so obviously and acting against their own law. 

And yet, since then, almost all Persian-speaking churches have been closed  and those that remain open cannot accept new members, meaning that their congregations are dying out. Today, Evangelical Assyrian and Armenian Christians, as well as Christian converts, have no place to worship. 

More than 130 Christians were arrested last year, more than half were detained, and many of them were officially charged with baseless accusations and sentenced to up to 10 years in prison. 

And while such oppression and inhumane treatment have become standard in Iran, we must never let the regime paint this as acceptable.

While I am in the UK I am urging its government to help us by publicly calling on the Iranian government to uphold the right to freedom of religion or belief for every citizen, regardless of their ethnic or linguistic group. That includes converts from other religions, as is Iran’s obligation under international law.

I am highlighting the situation of women and girls from religious minorities in Iran at the Human Rights Council and supporting the mandate of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran.

I am demanding that Iran amends Article 13 of its constitution, such that all religious minorities are recognised and able to fully enjoy their right to freedom of religion or belief.

The Iranian government has been using fear an instrument to control the nation. However, the wall of fear they have been building with their reign of violence and intimidation has been broken down. We are no longer afraid and we will not be intimidated.

The above is based on Dabrina Bet-Tamraz speech at the parliamentary event Iran: Oppressing religious freedom and women’s rights? Held by the charity Open Doors UK and Ireland.