🔗 Share this article

Over twenty Olympic champions, trainers and further international athletes have put their names to a letter calling for a halt to the execution of a boxing champion and instructor, who is on death row in the country.

Increasing Worldwide Condemnation

During growing international outrage over the country's increasing application of executions as a instrument of oppression, the strongly worded appeal condemns the authorities's verdict to confirm the execution order of the boxing champion.

The athlete, thirty, from Mashhad in the northeastern region, was taken into custody for being involved in nationwide protests in two thousand nineteen and indicted of backing an dissident organization. He has spent five years in detention, where he has been mistreated and kept in isolation.

“Sport is intended to encourage optimism, togetherness, and bravery,” the signatories expressed. “The death penalty of a champion for his beliefs is a direct assault on these values and a admonition to any competitor who dares to express dissent.

Pattern of Executing Sports Figures

The letter noted that Vafaei Sani’s circumstances was part of a pattern and highlighted the country's history of putting to death athletes for their convictions, such as a national team leader, skipper of the football side, and a women's sports leader, leader of the female volleyball side. In the year 2020, an athlete, a 27-year-old Iranian sports titleholder, faced the death penalty.

Additional signatories to the statement include a yachting pioneer, who skippered the inaugural women's squad in a global yacht race and was the first woman to be awarded a esteemed sailing award; the previous leader of the national squad a sports advocate; and Bahram Mavaddat, who was in the Iranian squad for the international competition.

Arrest and Unjust Proceedings

The athlete was taken into custody in early 2020. The allegations against him included “spreading corruption on Earth through arson and ruin of state assets”. His ruling has been reversed twice but on 4 October it was maintained on the third occasion. His court case was denounced as “deeply biased” by human rights activists and organizations.

Appeal to International Body

The urging to prevent the boxer's capital punishment is subsequent to a earlier statement to the United Nations official for freedoms, endorsed by more than a hundred advocates and organizations, urging intervention to avert the competitor's execution.

Execution Crisis

As per findings, there is an “death penalty surge in Iran, which has attained shocking proportions”. In two thousand twenty-three, the government sentenced at least eight hundred fifty-three people – a 48% surge on the previous year. Last year, data showed nearly a thousand capital punishments, marking the maximum count since two thousand fifteen. More than eight hundred people have been sentenced so far in the current year.

Political prisoners and protesters are focus, particularly in the aftermath of the 2022's demonstrations. Experts say the government have used the executions to stifle dissent, generate apprehension among the population and reinforce their control on power.