massacre will occur when US troops leave.
Protestors demanding “protection for Camp Ashraf,” the demonstrators also called on US President Barack Obama to remove the MEK/PMOI from a FTO list.
Speakers to the rally, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the Iranian Resistance(By recored Video);Governor Tom Ridge the first US Secretary of Homeland
Security (2003-2005); Ed Rendell Governor of Pennsylvania (2003-2011); Colonel Wesley Martin, former Coalition’s counter terrorism commander in Iraq and
former U.S. security commander in Ashraf; Nontombi Tutu, human rights activist and the daughter of Archbishop Desmond Tutu and DR. Reverend Lowery.
Here is text of speech by Naomi Tutu:
Thank you. Good afternoon.
I come here as one who doesn’t want to be part of a world that will say we didn’t know. We have had too many occasions in our history when people have said we didn’t know. We had people in Nazi Germany living right next to the concentration camps who said we didn’t know. We had white South Africans who we tried to tell over and over what apartheid was doing in our communities, about the death of children on the streets of Soweto, who at the end of apartheid said we did not know.
We cannot have people on January the 1st, 2012 say, Camp Ashraf, we did not know. We are here today to say we are going to make sure that everybody knows about Camp Ashraf.
We know that in the end, it will be governments and military and maybe the UN that will protect the people of Ashraf. We know that it will be governments that will finally have to delist the MEK,but we know that governments do not move unless pushed
by the people, and we are the people.
We know that during apartheid the U.S. Government didn’t want to impose sanctions against the apartheid governments, and we know that people in this country marched, people in this city were arrested outside the South African embassy, students built
shantytowns on college campuses, and a sanctions bill was passed against apartheid South Africa.
And even though the President vetoed that bill, because the people had pressured their Congresspeople, Congress overrode that veto. So we know that if we march, if we gather, if we speak, our governments will have to act against the Iranian government and will have to act on behalf of the refugees at Camp Ashraf.
But we have to be those who educate wherever we are, both in our circles, because when I speak to people in my community about Camp Ashraf, they say, “Camp who? Where is that, who is that, and why is that our issue?”
So we have to be the ones who tell people that our country, the United States, promised the people of Ashraf that they would be protected. We have to tell in our communities that the United Nations has said every member of Camp Ashraf is political refugee and has the rights of that status.
We have to be the one who says to our representatives that we want you to speak up for Ashraf. We have to be the ones who ensure that as our government spends money and troops in Iraq that that money is used to protect, not to kill, the people of Ashraf.
When I was growing up in South Africa, sometimes I would look around the world and it seemed as though the world did not care about the suffering of black South Africans, and then we saw people marching, we saw people refusing to buy South African products, we saw students building shantytowns on college campuses.
We need to see in our communities students building Camp Ashrafs on their college campuses, in front of our state governments, in front of our federal governments to tell them that we recognize the people of Ashraf, we stand with the people of Ashraf, and we will not allow the people of Ashraf to be massacred while we still stand.
We need to pressure the United Nations to put in place a security force immediately protect the people of Camp Ashraf. We need the countries of the United Nations to say that the Iraqi government cannot stand in the way of the UN Commission for Refugees in its interviewing and processing of the residents of Camp Ashraf.
We need to say to our government in this country, “You said you would protect them in our name, and we will not allow you to step back from that promise that you made in our name.”
We need to say to the Iraqi government,”December 31st is a deadline only in your mind. It is not a deadline in reality. That until and unless all the residents of Ashraf are safely in new countries,you cannot move to close Camp Ashraf.”
We might not be government leaders, we might not be UN diplomats, but all of those people actually answer to us, and we have to hold them to that promise.
We have to do whatever it takes, whether it be marching, whether it be attending rallies,whether it be writing letters, whatever it takes, whatever it is that we can each do, whether it is speaking in our communities, in our schools, in our universities, to say, “Next time we rally for Ashraf,
we want the crowd to go all the way back, that we will march in front of the Iraqi embassy to say we will not allow you to impose this deadline.”
I know what the power of people can do. I know, because I grew up oppressed, I grew up as someone who had no vote or no say in her country of birth. But because of the commitment of freedom-loving people around the world, apartheid was brought to an end.
So I know what lovers of human rights around the world can do when we are determined, and we are determined. We are determined not only that Ashraf will be safe, but we are determined that Iran will be free.
And so today we call on our President and on our State Department to delist the MEK, to tell the government of Iraq that the deadline of December 31st cannot stand, and to say that even if we remove our troops, we will continue to protect the people of Camp Ashraf.
We know that justice will prevail, but we also know that governments cannot plead neutrality in times of oppression, because neutrality during oppression is simply support of the oppressive, and we will not allow governments that say they represent us to be on the side of the oppressive.
We are here for human rights for justice, and for that we will continue to speak out and we will continue to stand. We know that we do not want to be those who live in a world that says we did not know, and today we pledge that no one will be able to say, “Camp Ashraf, what is that?”
Thank you.