Stop Fundamentalism – President-elect of the Iranian Resistance Maryam Rajavi, condemned talks on relocating Camp Ashraf residents inside Iraq, today in a statement, as a ploy to stage a “grand massacre devised by the Iranian theocratic and fascist rulers and the government of Iraq.”
Rajavi in her strongly worded statement stressed, “Forcible relocation of Ashraf residents is tantamount to sending them to their deaths and that is something they will never give in to.”
Camp Ashraf has been twice the scene of raid by Iraqi forces killing dozens of residents and wounding hundreds. The 3400 unarmed residents of the camp, who are members of Iran’s main opposition movement, MEK or PMOI, published video clips of the incident on YouTube showing Iraqi soldiers directly shooting at them.
The second attack last April created an international uproar of condemnations. Following discussions to resolve the issue and to meet demands of the Iraqi government, the European Parliament proposed a plan to resettle the residents outside Iraq. To do so the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has required the residents to apply for asylum individually through the UN Agency.
However, Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, set the end of this year as a deadline for the residents to leave the country.
While the residents have filed for individual asylum status through UNHCR as it required, the UN agency is yet to begin work as Iraqis are refusing to allow them to do so.
“The only acceptable option for relocation inside Iraq” said Rajavi in her statement, “is protection of Ashraf residents by the UN Blue Helmet forces and a UN monitoring team stationed in the new location until the last residents are transferred to third countries.” Otherwise any relocation inside Iraq would not be acceptable particularly to women in the camp. “They prefer to die in Ashraf rather than be buried in a remote location away from international attention,” she said emphasizing dangers that the residents would be facing when scattered in unknown remote locations throughout Iraq.
Questioning the peculiarity of the reasons why Nouri al-Malikit is obstructing in the work of UNHCR while it intends to facilitate removal of the residents from Iraq which is the wish of Iraqi government, Rajavi said, “At a time when the UNHCR has declared its readiness to establish the identity of Ashraf residents, it is not clear what conspiracy is at works that Maliki is preventing the UNHCR from carrying out its process.”
“Silence and inaction vis-à-vis a forcible relocation of Ashraf residents would pave the way for another great crime against humanity which is predictable,” said Rajavi stressing that, “any cooperation with regards to their forced relocation is complicity in the crime.”
Camp Ashraf is located north of Baghdad and is home to 3400 Iranian dissident exiles that have been living there for almost thirty years. Following the fall of Iraq’s former regime, the residents entered an agreement with the United States to turn in their weapons in replacement of receiving US protection until their final disposition.
But US troops turned in the protections duty to Iraqis in 2009 which marked the start of all the troubles as the Iraqi government is close to the Iranian regime and would be happy to annihilate Camp Ashraf and its inhabitants to win favors with the mullahs.
