Iraqi Government must immediately end inhumane and illegal siege on Ashraf, remove ban on entry of families, journalists, lawyers and international delegations to Ashraf
NCRI – Today, an Iraqi committee responsible for the suppression of Ashraf residents came to the entrance of Camp Ashraf along with a number of Iranian and Iraqi agents of the clerical regime. The agents were disguised as journalists and were accompanied by a busload of families sent there by the regime’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security’s Isfahan branch (so-called Nejat Association). At the entrance, they had a list of a number of residents who they demanded to meet outside the camp.
This is while the Iraqi government has turned Camp Ashraf into a prison for the past 10 months and persistently prevents journalists, families of residents, lawyers, human rights advocates, and parliamentary committees to enter the camp.
The residents replied that they will welcome family visits inside Ashraf and anyone willing to see them can go inside the camp. But the Iraqi agents refused to let people who posed as families of Ashraf residents into the camp. As such, the residents refused to assist the Iranian regime in its plot.
Prior to this, families from inside and outside Iran willing to visit their relatives in Ashraf freely entered Ashraf for six years (between 2003 to the end of 2008). However, starting in 2009, the current Iraqi government has prevented the visits at the behest of the clerical regime, and limited the visits to only those who came to Iraq with tours organized by the regime’s MOIS and willing to visit their relatives outside the camp under the watchful eye and cameras of the Iranian regime’s intelligence service. The families were brought there to convince their relatives to ask for forgiveness and surrender to the regime and moreover return to Iran and disseminate the regime’s propaganda against Ashraf residents.
Dozens of Ashraf families who over the course of recent years visited Ashraf are now imprisoned at Evin prison and placed under pressure and tortures. Some of them have been sentenced to long-term imprisonment. Moreover, raids against houses of Ashraf resident families as well as their arrests and beatings are still ongoing in Iran. Visiting loved ones in Ashraf is considered a crime by the regime.
On January 16, dozens of families who planned to visit Iraq and their children in Ashraf independent of the MOIS-organized tours, were arrested at Tehran airport. Most of them were elderly parents. They were beaten and taken straight from the airport to solitary confinement at Ward 209 of Evin prison. Subsequently, their private residences were attacked and ransacked by the regime’s suppressive forces. Some of the family members are still kept in Evin, with a number of them serving long-term prison sentences.
The Iranian Resistance condemns today’s measures by the Iraqi government’s committee to suppress Ashraf residents. This committee is an executor of the Iranian regime Supreme Leader’s diktats. It prevents families from entering Ashraf and forces residents to meet with their families under the watch of MOIS cameras and outside the camp. The Iranian Resistance considers these as inhumane and illegal measures, which intend to exploit family sentiments and feelings to advance the nefarious aims of the religious dictatorship ruling Iran against its political opponents.
Turning Ashraf into a prison and making its residents comply with the model of regular prison visits constitutes a violation of international law and fundamental human rights.
As the election date draws closer in Iraq, the Iranian Resistance calls on international authorities and the Iraqi public opinion to judge and evaluate the meddling and abhorrent plots of the Iranian regime and its Iraqi proxies for themselves.
The Iraqi government must immediately end the inhumane and illegal siege on Ashraf, especially as it concerns the ban on entry of families, journalists, lawyers, and international delegations to Ashraf.
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
October 31, 2009
