EFE (Spain News Agency) 11/08/2011
Important international political figures gathered today at a conference in Geneva to ask the UN to protect the 3,400 Iranian dissidents in camp Ashraf in Iraq where they live under the threat of slaughter to dismantle the facility.
These personalities were the former presidential candidate of Colombia and former FARC hostage Ingrid Betancourt, Democrat Senator Patrick Kennedy and two former U.S. Democratic Party presidential candidate in 2004, Howard Dean, and Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell.
The meeting was also attended by the president of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), Maryam Rajavi, who after being greeted with applause and cheers from hundreds of attendees, emphasized that Ashraf is in an “emergency situation” that requires actions pressing international concern.
Therefore, she requested the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to grant refugee status to the residents of Ashraf and facilitate their resettlement in third countries, as keeping or replacing them in Iraq is “a threat to their lives.”
According to Rajavi, the NCRI have evidence that the Iraqi authorities, at the behest of the regime in Tehran, plan an offense to wipe out, before the year ends, the field in which thousands of Iranians linked to People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI) live. The PMOI formed in 1979 with the victory of the Islamic revolution in that country.
Its members were welcomed and protected by Saddam Hussein in Iraq, where they launched attacks against the country and so were considered terrorists. Although laid down their arms in 1990, they remained on the blacklist of countries like the United States.
The current government in Baghdad sees the existence of Ashraf as an obstacle to its renewed ties with Tehran. In April, 2000 Iraqi soldiers stormed the camp and left nearly forty (civilians) killed and over 300 wounded.
“The people of Ashraf are deprived of their basic rights like health care and the possibility of leaving to find work, besides they are subjected to psychological torture with continuous use of 300 speakers,” said Rajavi.
Meanwhile, Betancourt urged the UN High Commissioners for Human Rights and for Refugees, Antonio Guterres and Navi Pillay, respectively, to act immediately to prevent “another announced genocide ,” as happened in Rwanda and the Balkans.
“We are waiting for a crime that we know will happen,” said Betancourt. She regretted the absence Pillay and Guterres in the room, who “live and work in Geneva and had only to cross the street to attend this conference.”
The claim by the U.S. that PMOI is a terrorist organization (the EU has already removed them from the list), Betancourt noted that she knows very well how the terrorists are and the people of Ashraf, “defenseless and unarmed,” does not look “at all”. She added: “If they were, they would not ask for international help.”
Meanwhile, the three representatives of the Democratic Party agreed that as Americans they are ashamed that their country has not fulfilled its promise to help the people of Ashraf, a commitment it made to them during the occupation of Iraq.
Kennedy noted that, despite having the law on its side under the Fourth Geneva Convention on Refugees, the issue of Ashraf is mostly a matter of “morality, common sense, and human rights.”
His party colleague, Dean, demanded the U.S. to endorse the plan, drawn up in May by the European Parliament to relocate the residents of Ashraf to third countries as soon as possible. He recalled that keeping PMOI in the terrorist list is the “primary obstacle for them to get refugee status.”
Also, the former governor of Pennsylvania indicated that he long thought that the human and economic cost of the Iraq war was justified by the fact of bringing peace and democracy to the country; but seeing the situation in Ashraf, it is clear that “left the job half done.”