A dual national jailed in Iran has started a hunger strike in solidarity with Barry Rosen, a former hostage, who has launched a campaign at Vienna talks to draw attention to those held by Tehran.
In a tweet on Sunday, his daughter Elika saidAnoushehAshoori has joined Rosen and other hunger striking activists from his cell in Tehran's Evin prison, demanding release of all foreign hostages.
Ashoori, a British-Iranian businessman, is one of several dual nationals who are in detention in Iran on unsubstantiated charges. Ashoori has been sentenced to 10 years in prison on alleged spying for Israel.
Rosen’s hunger strike In Vienna is gathering momentum as Nizar Zakka, a Lebanese former hostage in Iran, and UK-based Iranian journalist and activist Jamshid Barzegar have also joined the sit-in.
Rosen, the former US diplomat held hostage in Iran for 444 days four decades ago, said in a tweet on Sundaythat he is feeling “very weakened but buoyed” that others are joining the campaign.
While the negotiations in Vienna are centered on reviving the 2015 nuclear agreement, the JCPOA, many have raised the issues of Iran’s human rights record and its support for militant organizations in the Middle East. There is no indication that any of these concerns are dealt with at the talks.
Iran has detained many foreigners and dual nationals who have visited the country and used them as bargaining chips against Western countries, according to human rights organizations.
In a Twitter post Friday, the taboo-breaking standup comedian alleged that her page was reported by hardliner cyber-activists paid by state organizations. "It upsets me that some people are now sending invoices, and are getting paid from taxpayers' money, for shutting down my account," she wrote.
Recently, the online admission of a jihadi man proved that hardline followers of Iran's regime get paid for their activities online.
Empress Kuzcooo's Instagram page had over half a million followers before being deleted but she was lucky she had a second Instagram page that she had kept running in the background in preparation for the rainy day.
The video-post that demolished Empress Kuzcooo's very popular Instagram palace was entitled "Expert Scrutiny of Prayer at the Kremlin". In the video she made fun of President Ebrahim Raisi's prayer during his meeting with the Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Wednesday. Iran's hardliners say Raisi's much advertised prayerwas a "spiritual victory" for the Islamic Republic.
In her standup, Empress Kuzcooo criticized Raisi in hilarious terms for using time that should be dedicated to diplomatic negotiations, and "doing something for his country", to pray at the Kremlin Palace in front of cameras and made fun of his not-too-good public speaking skills.
"He knows he is not capable of speaking [diplomatically] … so he communicated his heart's desire to his God instead … Oh, God, he said, make Mr. Putin love me to help our wishes come true," Empress Kuzcooo who speaks like an elderly illiterate woman in Qom accent squeals in the video from under the black veil that only leaves her nose to be seen.
The number of followers for Empress Kuzcooo's 'spare' account, to which she has emigrated since Friday, is growing by the hour as followers discover her new page. In a matter of three hours Saturday, over four thousands followed the new page (iam.kuzcooo) which now has 26.5k followers.
Empress Kuzcooo is the artistic name of Zeynab Mousavi, a 32-year-old computer software graduate. Mousavi is also active on Twitter and Telegram. She works from home in her hometown of Qom, the city of Iran's largest Shia seminaries, and makes her living from advertisements on her social media accounts.
Her artistic name, Empress Kuzcooo, draws from the protagonist in the 2000 Disney animation 'Emperor's New Groove', an arrogant and saucy personality.
Mousavi is known to millions of Iranian social media users for her biting humor, impetuous criticism of clerics and politicians, and for breaking taboos by sometimes explicit sexual references in her standups.
In 2017, Mousavi told The Guardian that she would not give in to censorship and intimidation. On her Tweeter account Mousavi has published dozens of screenshots of abusive messages and comments she receives from hardliners. "Look, we have no toleration for insults against three people: The Leader of the Revolution, President Raisi, and Ghasem Soleimani. Our blood will boil if you insult them and we won't be responsible for anything we do," one such comment read.
Instagram users can report posts, profiles, and comments if they think they are spam or inappropriate directly from their own feed. Instagram will suspend or completely shut down the account if the number of complaints reaches a certain threshold or if the content is too obviously abusive, explicit, etc. Recovering deleted pages is possible if the account owner can prove they were wrongfully reported but it may take some time.
