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Young Australian couple traveling across Asia to prove how safe travel is held in prison in Iran for 3 months now

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thediamondage

thediamondage

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Oct 25, 2017
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News said:
A young travel-blogging couple driving across Asia and the Middle East — and posting aerial video footage online — is in custody in Iran for flying their drone without a permit near the capital city of Tehran.

Jolie King and Mark Firkin were busted in July and have been locked up since then in the country's notoriously harsh Evin Prison, according to a series of tweets from a producer for Manoto TV, a London-based, Persian-language TV channel. The bloggers, Jolie King and Mark Firkin, operate the website The Way Overland, which also has YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram accounts. The bloggers quit their jobs in July 2017 and started traveling the world with the goal of visiting 36 countries via an overland route from Australia to the UK. They support their travels through donations to their Patreon page.
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They were arrested in July for flying a drone in Iran around Tehran. They have been held in jail for a few months now, only 2 days ago their identities were revealed by a Persian language news outlet. Iran has not acknowledged their arrests, rumor is they are working on trading the two of them for Iranian citizens held in British or Australian prisons.

This isn't the first kind of incident like this, there have been American/European/Australian/etc young white people who travel to dangerous parts of the world to "inspire" people and show them that their prejudices are wrong, but things end up... poorly. Last year there was a young American man who went to north korea to proselytize or something and died in custody.

Is this just young naive people being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or a sort of white privilege disappearing when they travel to places that don't coddle them? I mean... I kind of find it nice these young kids wanna do this and try to bring together cultures, but another part of me says "GODDAMN IT WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU".

Evin Prison is the place Jason Rezaian was held and tortured for 544 days, you may remember him as the guy who was arrested a few years ago for being a spy after appearing on The Daily Show.

Hope these two youngsters get released soon.

This is her instagram
 
jaekeem

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Oct 27, 2017
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Why is it always white people when it's a story like this

Come on you gotta be safer
 
samoyed

samoyed

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jaekeem said:
Why is it always white people when it's a story like this

Come on you gotta be safer
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Privilege, wealth and being raised in liberal bubbles, which is actually all the same thing. No one who regularly experiences oppression goes around acting the fool like this.
 
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Arex

Arex

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Oct 27, 2017
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Well they did break the law, no drone flying laws are pretty normal everywhere, although probably not one that lands you in jail, but it's Iran, so shrugs. You should always check before doing something that may be unlawful.
 
samoyed

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At least they did this in Iran instead of North Korea. Hope they get home safely.
 
grand

grand

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jaekeem said:
Why is it always white people when it's a story like this

Come on you gotta be safer
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It's basically akin to the running joke that only white people get involved in horror movies because everyone else has the common sense to GTFO

But realistically, they are an affluent white couple living in developed & primarily white countries with no fear of their own government or police force. They have no idea about oppression or the rest of the world. See the drone thing where they naively thought that due process and freedom of expression would remain consistent with their British & Australian values.
 
Stinkles

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Victim blaming is bad but Two young people from two allied western nations Going to Iran and flying drones around in Tehran sounds like something spies would do and that will be the narrative from Tehran if it blows up.

We don't know on the other hand if they really were flying a drone or why they were picked up.

I've looked but can't find anything about them beyond travel blogging. Sometimes the "tourist" turns out to be "an expert on international relations who studied farsi and hard-line telecommunications during his ten years in the military and has a black belt in karate " but these two have nothing beyond their social footprint that I can find.
 

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I wonder if people said the same when that american guy who stole the poster got tortured by North Korea.

"What an idiot".
 
OP
OP
thediamondage

thediamondage

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Jaded Alyx said:
Why do this
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The coupled has been using a drone in their travels to upload videos to youtube for over a year now, its all on their youtube channel



This also comes at a time when Iran may be behind the massive attacks on the Saudi Arabian oil production facilities today, and Western militaries have seized a few Iranian oil ships in the straights of Hormuz which was smuggling Iranian oil to Syria.

Not really a good time to be stuck as a political poker chip in the Middle East.
 
Z-Beat

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grandjedi said:
It's basically akin to the running joke that only white people get involved in horror movies because everyone else has the common sense to GTFO
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Whole movie based around this

v1.bTsxMTIwMzc2NjtqOzE4MjY0OzEyMDA7MTIwMDsxNjAw
 

Deleted member 20295

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Where is the "to prove how safe travel is" bit coming from in the thread title?, I don't see that in the story nor in the videos linked, can't find that in the patreon either.

Hope they are OK.
 
Alucrid

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Jaded Alyx said:
I meant, why ignore the laws of the land you're in
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they probably never checked them

The Cowboy said:
Where is the "to prove how safe travel is" bit coming from in the thread title?, I don't see that in the story nor in the videos linked, can't find that in the patreon either.

Hope they are OK.
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some facebook post where they said they wanted to break the stigma around countries that get a bad rap

but yeah hope they get released and serve as an example about paying attention to the geopolitics of regions you plan on traveling to
 

Deleted member 39374

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User Banned (5 Days): Inflammatory generalizations
white people will literally cross the street to avoid sharing a sidewalk with a PoC but will happily treck into volatile regions just to show their instagram followers how #wanderlust is #magic
 

Deleted member 11413

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Kareha said:
Guess I'm an arsehole then.
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Yup. You are.
Her Instagram comments are full of people making prison rape jokes. That's the kind of mindset you are espousing right now. "Don't feel any sympathy for these people who did something stupid and now are being held in inhumane conditions and possibly tortured". Fuck off with that victim blaming bullshit.
 
clearacell

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White previledge at it's most obvious. "No one is gonna hurt me! The cops/government are just doing their job you just gotta reason with them!" They never felt oppression, so they don't know how to act in places that oppress as the norm.
 
Failburger

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Man, I barely feel safe enough traveling through much of the south and mid-west of the USA, and these dumbasses think they can stroll around a nation known for extremist views?
 
samoyed

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American/Anglo countries have an unfortunate binary approach to justice and punishment that says someone is either blameless and deserves nothing to happen to them or someone has responsibility and deserves anything that happens to them. These kids were dumb but they don't deserve to be tortured. It is, however, a clear case of people taking for granted the legal and ethical protections they enjoy under developed democracies, and this is definitely dumb and a case of privilege.

Someone walking into a burning building doesn't deserve being burned, but it is pretty fucking stupid.
 
thewienke

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Kareha said:
Guess I'm an arsehole then.
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You're not the only one here then.

"Play stupid games, win stupid prizes" comes to mind.

I don't wish anything horrible on these people and I hope they're released swiftly but this is some Darwin award levels of privilege. My sympathy for them comes more from a place that says "I'm sorry that the education system failed you so spectacularly that you thought this was a safe decision".
 
Kareha

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samoyed said:
Someone walking into a burning building doesn't deserve being burned, but it is pretty fucking stupid.
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If you walk into a burning building you do deserve to be burned, that's why you don't walk into a burning building. The only people who should do that are trained professionals who are wearing appropriate gear and know the dangers of walking into said building.
 

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Kareha said:
If you walk into a burning building you do deserve to be burned, that's why you don't walk into a burning building. The only people who should do that are trained professionals who are wearing appropriate gear and know the dangers of walking into said building.
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No one 'deserves' to be burned.
 
Scuffed

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Ya vacationing in Iran makes no sense to me. I hope they are released because incarceration for 3 months over this is terrible and way too harsh.

Many of the the comments in this thread are very mean spirited. Kind of embarrassing tbh.
 
Baphomet

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They did a stupid thing , but they don't deserve to be imprisoned/possibly tortured for it, some of you people need some therapy.
 
TheIdiot

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For a forum that is really against victim blaming... there sure is a lot of victim blaming here.

Why do we find it so easy to just insult innocent people without knowing about the circumstances? If a friend or relative of yours live blogging their travels were suddenly arrested in harsh conditions and not heard of, would you say they "had it coming" for flying a drone? Regardless of being "idiotic" or "doing it for the gram" or "white privilege" people here sometimes are so hypocritical it makes me actually face palm whenever I wander into these off topic threads.
 
New Donker

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TheIdiot said:
For a forum that is really against victim blaming... there sure is a lot of victim blaming here.

Why do we find it so easy to just insult innocent people without knowing about the circumstances? If a friend or relative of yours live blogging their travels were suddenly arrested in harsh conditions and not heard of, would you say they "had it coming" for flying a drone? Regardless of being "idiotic" or "doing it for the gram" or "white privilege" people here sometimes are so hypocritical it makes me actually face palm whenever I wander into these off topic threads.
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Yup. The replies here are super weird. I searched the story on Reddit and took a look at the comments on r/conservatives and I couldn't tell much of a difference from the posts here 🤷🏻‍♂️

This is insane and no couple deserves it. They're likely both being tortured and raped.
 
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