Photo: Toomaj | By Sanam Mahoozi, NBC News/Yahoo News | Hip-hop artist Toomaj Salehi rapped with blistering conviction about the Islamic Revolution’s “failure,” filming himself at protests and inspiring demonstrators to “battle” the country’s ruling clerical establishment.
Now the popular performer could be hanged in public after a court charged him with “corruption on earth” — a term that authorities use to point to a broad range of offenses that threaten social and political well-being and carries a possible death sentence.
Fear for his safety have also grown after Salehi’s official Twitter account posted Friday that despite being in danger of losing his eyesight, he was being repeatedly beaten.
The rapper was among the thousands who attended demonstrations for Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman who was detained in September by the country’s “morality police’’ after allegedly breaking the country’s strict dress codes. She died in a hospital three days later after falling into a coma.
The government has denied mistreating Amini, but the protests over her death only grew in the weeks that followed as more young people died and security forces brutally cracked down on demonstrators. Now, what started as an outburst of nationwide anger at the treatment of women and girls has morphed into a demand for deep and fundamental change.
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Read the full, awful story here – and yet the government of Iran says they are for human rights:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/rapper-became-voice-iranian-revolt-123005138.html
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
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Read the original story here:
https://www.change.org/p/free-iranian-protest-rapper-toomaj-salehi-freetoomajsalehi-freetoomaj
Iranian Rapper Toomaj Who Became the Voice of the Iranian Revolt is in Danger of Execution
