NCRI –In a letter to the United Nations Secretary General on behalf of 35 Iraqi parliamentarians from various political groups, Dr. Saleh al-Mutlaq, Chairman of the Iraqi National Dialogue Front called for his intervention and implementation of international guarantees to secure the rights of Ashraf residents.
Text of the statement by Iraqi National Dialogue Front follows:
• 35 Iraqi members of Parliament from various groups demand the implementation of the European Parliament resolution concerning the residents of Ashraf
• In the absence of adequate safeguards to ensure the rights of Ashraf residents, international guarantees must be set to prevent the violation of the residents’ rights.
In a letter to the United Nations Secretary General on behalf of 35 Iraqi parliamentarians from various political groups, Dr. Saleh al-Mutlaq called for the Secretary General’s intervention and implementation of international guarantees to secure the rights of Ashraf residents.
Dr. al-Mutlaq, the leader of the Iraqi National Dialogue Front at the Iraqi Parliament, wrote to the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon, saying: “Many of my colleagues and I at the Iraqi parliament have made every effort to ensure that the rights of Ashraf residents are recognized, that international law and the European Parliament resolution, which was adopted on 24 April 2009 concerning the people of Ashraf, will be implemented, and that the siege imposed on them is lifted.
“However, we were shocked on Thursday, May 28, when a large number of Iraqi police forces entered Ashraf to further reinforce its blockade and harass the residents of an essentially disarmed camp… 99.7% of residents of Ashraf have decided to stay in Iraq as opposed to leaving the country voluntarily, according to figures obtained from individual private interviews conducted by the Iraqi Human Rights Ministry in a free and open environment. Therefore, according to various international humanitarian laws and the principle of non-refoulement, they should not be subjected to any harassment.”
The 35 MPs, who represent a wide range of Iraqi parliamentary blocs, emphasized the need to implement the European Parliament’s resolution and respect the rights of the people of Ashraf.
The European Parliament resolution calls on the Iraqi government to “end the siege of Camp Ashraf and recognize the legal rights of its residents, who are recognized as ’protected persons‘ under the Geneva Conventions and to refrain from any action that puts their lives or safety risk.”
The letter addressed to the UN Secretary General also said: “Since there is an absence of adequate safeguards to ensure the rights of Ashraf residents, and since we do not want Iraq to breach international laws or violate human rights, we call upon Your Excellency, in your capacity as the guarantor of respect for international treaties and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to intervene in order to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe, and to provide international guarantees for monitoring the rights of these individuals in order to prevent any act that would endanger these political refugees’ lives.”
Iraqi National Dialogue Front
May 30, 2009
