A prominent Iranian activist has sewn his lips together and is holding daily protests in Tehran following the apparent suicide last week of a fellow campaigner, he posted on social media on Thursday.
Hossein Ronaghi said he stitched his lips together in protest at the restrictions authorities placed on the funeral last week of Kianoosh Sanjari, who friends said committed suicide after warning he would take his own life if political prisoners were not freed.
The death of Sanjari, 42, who returned to Iran just under a decade ago after a spell living in the United States, has shocked the activist community who accuse the Islamic republic of driving him to take his own life after years of arrests and persecution.
Ronaghi, a widely followed freedom of speech campaigner, began his action on November 16, the day when he says authorities blocked friends and colleagues from attending a memorial service for Sanjari in Tehran.
Sanjari took his own life during the night of November 14-15, hours after posting a tweet on X warning that he would commit suicide if Iran did not release four prominent detainees seen as political prisoners by human rights groups.
Ronaghi, who has posted images of his lips sewn together with blue twine, has said he will continue his action until the prisoners whose release Sanjari demanded are freed.
He has held solo sit-ins in Tehran squares that have led to repeated arrests but, so far, he has not been held for more than a few hours.
“My decision is this: I will continue with my lips sewn shut until Kianoosh’s wishes are fulfilled,” Ronaghi wrote on social media Thursday.
“My action with sewn lips is a political protest, and the responsibility for it, whether I am in prison, whether I am out of prison, whether you lock me in at home and prevent the sit-in, is with the Islamic republic.”
Ronaghi has also accused security personnel who arrested him earlier this week of subjecting him to sexual abuse and insults.
He said he was feeling increasingly weak and his lips were “swollen and sore” after taking in only water, tea and injections of medicines, including antibiotics.
His action comes with Iranian activists still reeling from the crackdown that followed nationwide protests in 2022-23 over the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd who had been arrested for an alleged breach of the mandatory dress code for women.
Sanjari had demanded the release of veteran campaigner Fatemeh Sepehri, Nasreen Shakarami, the mother of a teenager killed during 2022 protests, rapper Tomaj Salehi and civil rights activist Arsham Rezaei.
