Tabriz Students Condemn Violence Against Children

Tabriz schoolchildren showed their solidarity with pupils in Pakistan and Afghanistan this week, posting messages of support on a Facebook page on December 20. 

“We are friends and companions of Afghan and Pakistani pupils,” they wrote, posting a photograph of themselves with their teacher. 

The gesture was a response to last week’s massacre in Peshawar, in which the Taliban murdered 132 students. Many others were injured in the incident. 

But it was also a show of solidarity with Afghan schoolchildren in Pakdasht, northern Iran. Sharvan newspaper reported on December 19 that a primary school teacher had punished and humiliated students by making them put their hands in the school’s toilet. All the students were from Afghan families. 

It was the latest in a series of shocking punishments of schoolchildren in Iran, including one incident where a teacher assaulted a student with a gas pipe. 

Read the original article in Persian