Displacement of Camp Ashraf residents is absolutely unlawful,
constitutes crime against humanity, paves the way for a human catastrophe
NCRI – In an effort to appease the religious fascism ruling Iran, Mouwaffaq al-Rubaie, Iraq’s National Security Advisor, repeated his unlawful claims against the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI) and the residents of Camp Ashraf. Speaking to reporters in a press conference in Baghdad on Friday, he said that he planned to send the residents of Ashraf to remote areas. The press conference was held while the Speaker of the Iranian regime’s Majlis (Parliament), Ali Larijani, is on a visit to Iraq.
Al-Rubaie’s assertion that the residents of Ashraf are to be transferred to a different place is absolutely unlawful and lays the groundwork for a human catastrophe in Ashraf. The residents of Ashraf will never leave their home and the city they have lived in for the past 23 years and have built everything there by themselves.
Contrary to al-Rubaie’s remarks, the PMOI’s presence in Iraq is lawful. They are political refugees and are protected persons under the Fourth Geneva Convention. Their forcible expulsion from Iraq or forcible displacement within Iraq violates the recognized international principles including the International Humanitarian Law and constitutes a crime against humanity. According to the Article 7 of the Statute of the International Criminal Court forcible displacement of a population is a clear case of crime against humanity.
Al-Rubaie’s remarks against the PMOI and the residents of Ashraf in recent weeks are entirely dictated by the religious dictatorship in Iran. On February 28, 2009, in his meeting with the President of the Republic of Iraq, using a condescending tone, Ali Khamenei, Supreme Leader of the Iranian regime, said, “…It is expected that you and the Iraqi Prime Minister Mr. al-Maliki seriously pursue the bilateral agreements and understandings … The bilateral agreement on the expulsion of the PMOI from Iraq must be implemented and we are awaiting this".
Subsequent to Khamenei's remarks, Hashemi Rafsanjani, head of the regime’s Expediency Council and a former president, went to Iraq for a week long visit to discuss the way to expel the PMOI from Iraq. Larijani has been in Iraq for the past few days. Al-Rubaie clearly stated at the press conference that removal of the PMOI was an important step in Iraq's efforts to improve relations with neighboring Iran. He added, “We want to create a network of interest between Iraq and Iran.”
Al-Rubaie gave a figure of 30 square miles for the area of Ashraf, which is a 100 percent exaggeration. In his statement on March 16 and his interview on March 21 he said that the area of Ashraf was 400 square kilometers. The Iraqi National Security Advisor did not explain what the reason behind his last week’s lies was and what made him to draw back 600 percent.
In his remarks, al-Rubaie went a step further and brazenly said that women [in Ashraf] should go back to their country (Al-Hurra TV). One should advise the Iraqi National Security Advisor to observe some restraints in his submission to the misogynist rulers in Iran. We should like to remind that women’s rights are highly respected under the International Humanitarian Law and the Geneva Conventions and abuse of their rights are considered as a major crime. We should also emphasize that any disrespect to female members of the PMOI will not be forgiven by the Iranian people.
Al-Rubaie’s remarks describing the PMOI as a terrorist organization is particularly irrelevant. The PMOI has never been on the United Nations terrorist list and courts in Britain and the European Union annulled unjust terrorist designation of PMOI in seven different rulings. Britain and the European Union finally removed the PMOI from their terrorist lists. The United States government which has not yet removed the PMOI from its blacklist announced in 2004 that following 16 months of screening of every single one of the residents of Ashraf, the U.S. government acknowledged their status as protected persons under the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Al-Rubaie ridiculously claims that they have been brainwashed and says that we can resettle them in new places separate from 15 to 20 of their leaders and provide them with normal life. As we suggested in our March 22 statement, if al-Rubaie is worried about the control of a small group of the Camp’s residents over the rest of them, he should give free access to 3,400 Ashraf residents to the outside world. Al-Rubaie should provide free access to parliamentarians, political figures and members of media to visit the Camp and find out for themselves of the conduct of the leaders.
Various American agencies in 2003 and 2004 have privately and without any outsiders have conducted interviews with each and every Ashraf residents. Then each year after that they have put the same question before the Ashraf residents asking them if they preferred to stay or leave the Camp. In addition, in recent months the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) three times and each time spent three days with the residents. Many of them spoke independently with the ICRC. A delegation from the United Nations Assistance Mission to Iraq (UNAMI) also spent a few days in Ashraf in 2007. Delegations from Europe, the United States and Canada as well as members of the European Parliament have visited Ashraf and examined the situation closely. However, from the beginning of this year the Iraqi forces have forbidden all delegations from entering the Camp.
On February 25 and 26 an official Iraqi delegation conducted private interviews with a U.S. officer present at the Camp. Following the completion of interviews with 168 of the residents, they abruptly stopped despite the PMOI’s insistence to continue.
We should like to tell al-Rubaie that contrary to what he claimed at the press conference, it is not the PMOI whose “days in Iraq are numbered” but it is the days of the mullahs’ rule in Tehran that are numbered. This is exactly the reason why it is so frightened of the PMOI – unarmed and surrounded in Ashraf in Iraq. And, this is why the regime’s Supreme Leader, its president and all other key figures in the regime warn against the threat of the PMOI and stress on the need to have them expelled from Iraq.
Al-Rubaie's lies follow the same pattern as the clerical regime’s and have no other use but to justify violation of the rights of Ashraf residents. It also prepares the grounds for a human catastrophe. Thus, the Iranian Resistance calls on all competent human rights organizations in particular the ICRC, UN High Commissioner for refugees, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, UNAMI on one hand and Iraqi religious leaders, political parties and personalities and parliamentarians from Shiite, Sunni and Christian communities as well as Arab, Kurd or Turkmen ethnicities on the other, to dispatch their representatives to Camp Ashraf to conduct their independent investigations about the lies of al-Rubaie. Ashraf is transparent and the representatives can visit all places in Ashraf and speak freely to everyone at random. We also ask Mr. al-Rubaie not to prevent these delegations from entering Ashraf.
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
March 28, 2009
