In a letter today to the US Secretary of State John Kerry, the US families of the residents of Camp Liberty, called for his urgent intervention to avert a humanitarian crisis at the Camp in light of the Iraqi Government’s imposition of further restrictions on the residents over the past few days, clearly at the behest of the regime in Tehran.
“Since July 14, 2015, Iraqi security forces have prevented the entry of food, fuel and septic tankers into Camp Liberty. The Camp is currently on the brink of a humanitarian crisis because all its infrastructure, including water supply, sewage, and cooling systems as well as cooking and kitchen facilities depend on the electricity produced by power generators. As such, preventing delivery of fuel to the Camp, would result in a complete halt to all the Camp’s life-support systems as temperature rise to 120oF in Iraq,” USCCAR letter states.
The letter added that the residents had immediately informed the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) and the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, with the latter responding that it would also raise the issue with UNAMI. Unfortunately, UNAMI has done nothing to alleviate this crisis, only parroting the Iraqi Government’s routine prevarications.
The letter called on Secretary Kerry “to use your good offices to immediately take up the issue with Prime Minister of Iraq to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe that would adversely affect our loved ones at Camp Liberty, whom the United States had made a commitment to protect.”
Residents of Camp Liberty, members of Iran’s democratic opposition, the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (PMOI/MEK) and their families, were formally recognized as “Protected Persons” under the Fourth Geneva Convention in 2004 and as “Asylum Seekers” by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in 2011.
There have been several deadly attacks on the residents by the Iraqi forces at the behest of Tehran. The 2011 attack – described by then Senator Kerry, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as a “massacre” – left 36 residents dead and hundreds wounded. Fifty-two more were murdered execution-style in September 2013, when Iraqi Special Forces invaded Camp Ashraf and shot the residents at point-blank range, with their hands tied behind their backs.
