Human rights activists in Iran are subjected to beatings with batons, mock hangings, rape, sleep deprivation, and threats that family members will be raped or killed, a U.N. rights investigator said in a report released on Thursday, October 11, Reuters reported. The U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in Iran, Ahmed Shaheed, said in a report to the U.N. General Assembly that Iranian authorities undermined press freedoms, watched some journalists constantly and detained and persecuted others unfairly. Shaheed said Iranian authorities executed at least 223 people in the first six months of this year, most of them for drug-related offenses. A large number of those executed were convicted at unfair trials. The report provides “a deeply troubling picture of the overall human rights situation in the Islamic Republic of Iran, including many concerns which are systemic in nature,” Shaheed said.