UN rapporteur joins weekly hunger strike over Iran's execution surge and protest crackdown

Gina Romero Rodríguez, the United Nations special rapporteur on the freedom of peaceful assembly and association, will join a weekly hunger strike on Tuesday to protest the Islamic Republic’s ongoing human rights violations and use of the death penalty to suppress dissent, she announced on X on Monday.

Though Rodriguez did not respond to The Jerusalem Post, in a video statement on her social media, she confirmed that she would be joining the longstanding weekly “no-execution Tuesday hunger strike” against both the use of the death penalty and the continued denial of the right to free assembly in Iran.

“The death penalty is being used against people for exercising the rights of freedom of assembly, association, and expression, as well as their political rights,” she said, recalling how in January the Islamic regime’s security forces brutally murdered thousands of protesters and have since continued to execute those detained in connection with the demonstrations.

While human rights groups have said upwards of 30,000 were killed, Iran’s internet blackout and continued suppression efforts have prevented international groups from reaching an exact figure on those killed. Rodriguez also noted that at least 46 political prisoners and protesters have been executed since March 19.

“This is the highest concentration of political executions in Iran in nearly 40 years. Protesters have been unlawfully detained, and their cases have been riddled with procedural unfairness and underlying gross human rights violations, including torture, enforced disappearances, sexual violence, coerced confessions, and denial of access to lawyers of their choosing,” she said. “The execution and planned executions of young people, including students and athletes, show how protests and peaceful political”

Rodgriguez urges international community to join hunger strike

Urging the international community to join her in the hunger strike, she said she wanted to express solidarity with the protesters killed in Iran, including Alireza Sepahi, 24, Alireza Raisi, 21, Siavash Jamshidi Kheirabadi, Ali Hemmati, 21, and Majid Nik-Andish, 25, as well as 26-year-old law graduate Mehdi Khanaki.

Rodriguez also hoped to draw international attention to the cases of former boxing champion Mohammad Javad Vafaie Sani, 18-year-old Shervin Bagherian and brothers Hamidreza and Abdolreza Fathi, all of whom are on death row.

Sani, whose request for a retrial was rejected in December last year, was arrested in 2020 for taking part in nationwide democracy protests in 2019 and for allegedly supporting the opposition group the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (MEK).

Bagherian was sentenced to death on the charge of moharebeh (enmity against God) in connection with the Alikhani Square case, in which dozens were arrested over clashes with security forces in Tehran during the January protests. He turned 18 only days before he was arrested from his home and was tortured into confessing on state television.

Corruption on earth, enmity against God

The Fathi brothers were sentenced by the Shiraz Revolutionary court to death on charges of “corruption on earth” over allegations of involvement in the death of a Basij member and damage to public property. According to Hengaw, both brothers were tortured into confessing, leaving one of them with a broken arm.

According to a report released by the Human Rights Activists News Agency on Friday, at least 2,003 people were executed in Iran between October 10, 2025, and October 8, 2026, including at least four juvenile offenders. During the same period, at least 230 additional people were sentenced to death.

The majority of the documented executions, 95%, were carried out without any announcement from authorities. Nine of the executions were carried out in public.

HRANA's documentation found that 57.56% of those executed had been convicted of murder and 36.25% of drug-related offenses. Political and security-related charges of moharebeh or baghi accounted for 2.4% of executions, while 1.1% involved other or unknown charges. A further 0.9% were executed on security-related charges, including espionage, assassination, or bombing; 0.8% for rape; 0.8% for non-political moharebeh; and 0.15% for corruption on Earth.

Of 69 people executed on political and security-related charges over the past year, 35 were executed in connection with the January 2026 protests.