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David Keyes Punks Iranian Nuclear Negotiators in Vienna

July 9, 2015

Human rights activist David Keyes was in Vienna for the nuclear negotiations with Iran and punked several Iranian negotiators.

The United States and other world leaders are currently in tense negotiations with Iran, but Keyes looks to ease the tensions.

Keyes used humor and satire to confront several Iranian negotiations about their country's abuse of human rights.

"Who is your favorite political prisoner?" Keyes asked several Iranian officials.

Keyes also compared United States human rights violations to Iran violations with reporter Oliver Towfigh Nia.

"I don’t think human rights in the United States is much better, you know?" Towfigh Nia said. "You have some problems too. Kill a few blacks and shooting them and like you know. And talking about gays you know."

"No, that’s true.  There are some similarities," Keyes said. "America just allowed gays to marry and Iran hasn’t hung a gay person in at least a few hours."

Keyes stated that Iran hangs prisoners at a rate of one every two hours in the past month and joked that Iran just agreed to reduce the rate to one hanging every two and half hours.

"I wanted to congrats you on the success for reducing the rate of hangings in Iran. Hopefully only once every two and half hours," Keyes told top U.S. negotiator Wendy Sherman.

The Untied States has ignored Iran’s human rights abuses, support for terrorist activities, and U.S. citizens being held prisoner there during the nuclear negotiations.

Keyes is the executive director of Advancing Human Rights and co-founder of CyberDissidents.org and has used humor and satire to address human rights concerns in Middle East countries. Keyes previously released a video where he "celebrated" Iran’s 1,000 hangings with lead Iranian Foreign Minister and lead negotiator in Vienna, Javad Zarif.