Source: Al-Siyasa Kuwaiti Daily, April 5, 2009
The Following are excerpts from the main article in Arabic
The Iranian regime has targeted the presence of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) in Iraq. It continues to intensify this action through its local agents and security organs which have infiltrated Iraq, with a chain of criminal operations and false propaganda regarding Ashraf City.
Source: Al-Siyasa Kuwaiti Daily, April 5, 2009
The Following are excerpts from the main article in Arabic
The Iranian regime has targeted the presence of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) in Iraq. It continues to intensify this action through its local agents and security organs which have infiltrated Iraq, with a chain of criminal operations and false propaganda regarding Ashraf City.
In accordance with the Fourth Geneva Convention, the organization’s members are considered internationally protected persons. Yet the Iranian regime’s plots against their presence in Iraq are still continuing. In such circumstances, international law require the protection of its residents because of the fact that every single one of them is considered to be a protected person in accordance with the seventh article of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Therefore, not the PMOI, but its members are in fact de facto refugees and they do not require a legal status to be considered as refugees. It is sufficient that they are internationally recognized as refugees. So, Ashraf City residents are individual refugees, and the Iraqi government or any other government must treat them as such. The Coalition forces, having occupied Iraq, confirmed this legal status after exhaustive, thorough and credible reviews, and the American forces accepted responsibility to protect the city. This is because the residents’ situation had arisen from the war between the US and Iraq, a conflict in which the PMOI played no part and remained neutral. The city’s “foreign” residents received a de facto refugee status. This description is in reality used by international law and the Geneva Conventions, and engenders many rights and privileges. The truth of the matter is that the PMOI’s members reside in Ashraf on a voluntary basis and in accordance with their own free will. Because of their stay in this honorable stronghold of resistance and perseverance, they have tolerated a lot of pain and misery.
The Iranian regime has resorted to a colorful array of methods and plots to impose pressure on the refugees of Ashraf in order to force their leave and hand over to the mullahs’ forces. Factions linked with the Iranian government have committed many crimes by imposing pressures on Ashraf residents. For example, on February 8, 2008, they bombed Ashraf City’s water pumping facilities which provided water for drinking and agriculture to 20,000 of the region’s residents as well. They then murdered the Iraqi sheikh who was in charge for protecting the water pumping station. The mullahs also fabricated lies in order to be able to accuse Ashraf residents of participating in terrorist acts in Iraq. For example, there was one accusation being spread in the regime’s media outlets like the Baztab website, affiliated to Mohsen Rezai, the former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and a deputy and right-hand man of Rafsanjani.
After the UK tribunal Proscribed Organizations Appeal Commission (POAC) ruled that the listing of the PMOI as a proscribed organization is illegal and must be set aside, the European Parliament issued a statement in support of the ruling and called for its implementation. This led the mullahs and their proxies to conduct violent attacks against the organization. Its intelligence agents came from Canada, the UK, and Norway to Iraq and took residence in Mansour Hotel in Baghdad across from the Iranian embassy. The contact for this group was a person identified as “Tabatabai,” who was a member of the IRGC’s Qods Force. The Iranian embassy put its plans into action, and a while after the bombing of the Ashraf City water station occurred, which supplied water to surrounding villages. As a result of this inhuman act, 20,000 people living in the region were deprived of water. Moreover, the Iranian regime and its agents established an organization claiming to be an NGO entitled “The Human Rights Organization in Khales.” In reality, the members of this so-called human rights organization were Qods Force agents who had contacts with the Iranian embassy in Baghdad.
The facts show that the fascist regime in Tehran tries to remove the PMOI from Iraq, because it wants to remove the biggest obstacle against its plans to swallow Iraq whole.
In the past, 5.2 million Iraqis signed a statement supporting the continued presence of the PMOI in Iraq. Moreover, 12,000 Iraqi jurists and 300 tribal sheikhs from all over Iraq, in addition to 450,000 people of Diyala signed statements in support of the continued presence of the PMOI in Iraq. Also, the document of solidarity, friendship, alliance and support from 300,000 people from southern Iraq was signed, and all the Shiites, those who the Iranian regime claims to be the leader of, dealt a huge blow to the Iranian regime. All this forced the Iranian regime to continue with its plots against this organization. However, thanks to the perseverance of the members of this organization since its inception in 1965 up to now, all of Iran’s plots have failed.
The mullahs’ regime knows perfectly well that the biggest threat to its future is the PMOI, since the PMOI is the backbone of the political alternative for the regime. So, all the yelling and screaming will not benefit the regime. Even if all its agents were to come to Iraq, the Iraqi people’s support for the PMOI, from every social sector, including lawmakers, intellectuals, tribal leaders, and the populace in general, has been recorded by 5.2 million Iraqis who have supported the continued presence of this organization in Iraq.
In order for the entire world to be aware of the hardships of the refugees in Ashraf as well as the plots of the mullahs and their proxies against this organization, all humanitarian and political organizations must immediately intervene in support of Ashraf refugees because Tehran’s henchmen and butchers are threatening their lives with a catastrophic fate.