UN Special Rapporteur Romero to join hunger strike against executions — Jerusalem Post
UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association Gina Romero Rodriguez said she will join a weekly hunger strike in Iran on Tuesday to protest the use of the death penalty and the suppression of dissent. She announced this in a video address on social media, the Jerusalem Post reports.
Romero Rodriguez will join the “No Executions Tuesdays” campaign, whose participants oppose the death penalty and restrictions on the right to peaceful assembly in Iran. According to her, the death penalty is being used against people for exercising their rights to freedom of assembly, association, expression and political rights.
Statements on executions after protests
The rapporteur said that after the January protests, Iranian security forces killed thousands of demonstrators, and authorities subsequently continued executing detainees connected to the protests. Human rights groups reported more than 30,000 deaths, but the exact number cannot be established due to internet shutdowns and subsequent restrictions.
Romero Rodriguez also said that since March 19, at least 46 political prisoners and protesters have been executed in Iran. She called this the highest concentration of political executions in the country in nearly 40 years and said that procedural safeguards had been violated in the cases of detainees, including torture, enforced disappearances, sexual violence, forced confessions and denial of access to lawyers of their choice.
Cases of those sentenced to death
The rapporteur called on the international community to join the hunger strike and drew attention to the cases of former boxing champion Mohammad Javad Vafaei Sani, 18-year-old Shervin Bagherian, and brothers Hamidreza and Abdolreza Fathi, who are awaiting execution of their death sentences.
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Vafaei Sani was arrested in 2020 for participating in the nationwide protests of 2019 and for allegedly supporting the opposition organization Mojahedin-e Khalq. His petition for a retrial was rejected in December 2025. Bagherian was sentenced to death on charges of “enmity against God” in a case involving clashes with security forces in Tehran during the January protests.
The Fathi brothers were sentenced to death by the Revolutionary Court in Shiraz on charges of “spreading corruption on earth” over alleged involvement in the death of a member of the Basij militia and damage to public property. According to the human rights organization Hengaw, both brothers were tortured into confessing, and one of them had his arm broken.
Human rights data
According to a report by Human Rights Activists News Agency, at least 2,003 people were executed in Iran from October 10, 2025, to October 8, 2026, including at least four juvenile offenders. At least 230 more people received death sentences during that period.
Human rights defenders noted that 95% of documented executions were carried out without an official announcement by the authorities, and nine were public. Of the 69 people executed on political or security charges during the year, 35 were linked to the January 2026 protests.
