Gina Romero, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, announced that she would go on a hunger strike on Tuesday, October 13, in solidarity with Iran’s “Tuesdays Against Executions” campaign.
The “Tuesdays Against Executions” campaign was launched in February 2024 at Qezel Hesar Prison in Karaj.
The “Tuesdays Against Executions” campaign, which hundreds of prisoners across 56 prisons nationwide have joined, aims to protest the death penalty and oppose it as an inhumane and irreversible punishment.
Last week, as October 10, the World Day Against the Death Penalty, approached, the campaign entered its 141st week.
Gina Romero, a UN Special Rapporteur, has also formally announced that she will join the campaign on Tuesday, October 13.
Romero, who works on issues relating to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, emphasized in a video message, also published on X, that she is joining the campaign because the death penalty in Iran is imposed on people seeking to exercise their rights to freedom of expression and assembly and their political rights.
Gina Romero, stressing that the death penalty must be abolished in all cases, not only in Iran but throughout the world, recalled the thousands of people killed by Iranian regime security forces in January 2026 solely for protesting.
In the remainder of her message, Romero also expressed solidarity with the families of young men executed by Iran’s judiciary in recent months, including the families of Alireza Sepahi, Siavash Jamshidi, Ali Hemmati, Mehdi Khanki, and Shervin Bagherian.
Last Friday, October 9, a group of United Nations experts once again called on Iranian regime officials to immediately halt executions.
The experts noted that Iran is among the few countries that continue to carry out executions and has the highest execution rate relative to its population.
Mai Sato, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran and one of the principal drafters of the experts’ latest statement, wrote on X: “On the eve of the World Day Against the Death Penalty, together with other experts, we prepared and published this press release to express our opposition to executions in Iran.”
The statement referred to the killing of thousands of Iranian protesters by security forces in January 2026, an act that an independent fact-finding committee has characterized as a “crime against humanity.” It stated that the past cannot be undone, but the fate of those currently on death row rests entirely in the hands of Iranian regime officials.
The increased use of the death penalty in Iran, particularly in recent months, has sparked international concern. Human rights groups and governments say Tehran uses executions to instill fear in society and prevent further protests from emerging.
According to Amnesty International, Iran’s regime executed at least 2,159 people in 2025.