Ashraf is home to 3,500 members of the main Iranian opposition, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK). The camp of unarmed Iranian refugees was brutally attacked by the Iraqi mercenaries of the Iranian regime.
The five other parliamentarians were: Dr. Ahmad Alavan, Tah al-Loheibi, Adnan Ziab, Sheikh Nayef Jassem, and Sheikh Khaled Bareh.
The letter by the Iraqi lawmakers to Ban Ki-Moon said in part:
As you are aware, on Tuesday, July 28 and Wednesday, July 29, Ashraf, home to 3500 members of the Iranian regime's opposition the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran, was attacked by Iraqi armed forces. In order to suppress the unarmed and defenseless refugees, the attackers used front-loaders, Humvee armored vehicles, as well as other suppressive weapons such as batons, tear gas, pepper spray, axes, sickles, sticks and live rounds of ammunition. The attack led to the killing of 11 people, wounding of 500. More than 1000 people suffered minor injuries while 36 were kidnapped.
The parliamentarians referred in their letter to the fact that the PMOI has been disarmed and enjoys protected persons status under the Fourth Geneva Convention, and added: We Iraqi parliamentarians vehemently condemn this inhumane action and view it as a clear violation of human rights. We call on you to personally intervene and contact the governments of Iraq and the United States to take immediate measures with the objective of preventing the deterioration of the situation and continuation of the human catastrophe. We invite you to do so on the basis of the R2P [Responsibility to Protect] principle which you have consistently supported by explicitly saying that protection is not contrary to sovereignty but is rather an imperative for it. We thus demand your intervention to save the lives and ensure the security of Ashraf residents, who have been the Iraqi people’s guests for the past two decades.
In their letter to Ban Ki-Moon, the Iraqi parliamentarians expressed the following demands:
1. To prevent further tensions and to put an end to all forms of violations of the rights of Ashraf residents, police forces must immediately leave the camp;
2. The 36 kidnapped individuals, some of whom are in critical condition, must be returned to Ashraf immediately;
3. The unjust siege on Ashraf must be lifted to allow the flow of food products and entrance of lawyers and journalists into Ashraf.