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Iranian pupils teach clerical leaders a rude lesson in class

Middle east correspondent By James Rothwell

IRANIAN youngsters are removing their hijabs and giving portraits of their clerical leaders in classrooms the middle finger as a massive uprising against the regime in Tehran spreads to schools.

Video footage posted online this week showed schoolgirls making the gesture and turning portraits of Iran’s leaders to face against the wall in classrooms. As with older women in Iran, they have also refused to wear headscarves in some schools, protesting against rules enforced by the regime’s morality police.

Footage has emerged of a group of schoolchildren in the city of Karaj near Tehran chasing an education official off the premises as they hurled empty water bottles at him and chanted “shame on you”.

It came as the BBC reported that Iranian security forces secretly buried the body of a 16-year-old protester far from her village after she disappeared for 10 days.

In a last message to her friends, Nika Shakarami had said she was being pursued by security forces.

Her relatives told the BBC that when they went to identify Nika’s body they were only allowed to briefly see her face, raising suspicions that she may have been killed by the authorities.

Iran has been gripped by unprecedented protests over the past two weeks which began in response to the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody, after she was detained for incorrectly wearing a hijab.

The demonstrations have quickly evolved into a full-blown campaign to bring down the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

World News

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2022-10-05T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-10-05T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://dailytelegraph.pressreader.com/article/281994676380019

Daily Telegraph