Hoda Niku, model and influencer with 520,000 followers, speaks out against Iran government's protest crackdown

Hoda Niku
Hoda Niku

Hoda Niku, an Iranian-born YouTuber and model in South Korea, has delivered a video message in Korean calling for greater attention to Iran's anti-government protests.

In the video titled "For Freedom in Iran," shared on her Instagram account on Sunday, Niku, dressed in black in remembrance of protest victims, said the Iranian government has severed outside access and violently suppressed demonstrators, resulting in numerous casualties.

"Iranians have long taken part in many protests in pursuit of freedom and democracy. During that time, force was often used to suppress people's voices and many lives were sadly affected. And now these people once again have great courage to make a change," she said.

"But to prevent this, the authorities blocked internet access and even phone calls stopped working. As someone who loves both of my countries, Iran and Korea, I'm sharing this video in the hope that the voices of the Iranian people can be heard a little more widely."

Fueled by the collapse of the Iranian rial, the country's currency, and soaring prices, anti-government protests in Iran that erupted late last year on Dec. 28 have continued into a second week, spreading across all 31 provinces and to more than 180 cities nationwide, according to news reports.

The exchange rate for the rial surged to between 1.42 million and 1.45 million per dollar late last month.

As of Tuesday, nearly 2,000 people have been killed in Iran's anti-government protests, according to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency. Of the total, 1,847 were protesters, while 135 were members of the military, police or other government forces.

In another post, the 30-year-old Iranian influencer, who has more than 520,000 followers on Instagram, sharply criticized the Iranian government for cutting off internet access to suppress the public. "If this is not a massacre, what should it be called?" she said.

Niku moved to Korea in 2017 to escape Iran's strict social regulations imposed on women, including mandatory hijab rules, she said in an interview aired by KBS on "My Neighbor, Charles" in 2020. She studied Korean at the Seoul National University Language Education Institute and has since worked as a beauty and fashion model.


cjh@heraldcorp.com