REUTERS

BRUSSELS, Nov 24 (Reuters) – EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton will urge EU states next week to accept as many residents as they can of a camp of Iranian dissidents in Iraq that Baghdad plans to close by the end of the year, EU officials said on Thursday.

Ashton will make the call as part of efforts to resolve the issue of Camp Ashraf, a base of the People's Mujahideen Organisation of Iran, which mounted attacks on Iran before the U.S.-led removal of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has been trying to arrange to interview the more than 3,000 residents to determine who among them qualifies for refugee status and thus resettlement, but Iraq has yet to allow this.

A senior EU official said the United Nations and Iraq were working to resolve “a logistical problem” caused by Iraq's refusal to allow the interviews to take place at the camp.

He said Iraq had proposed that the interviews take place at a Baghdad hotel. Talks were also under way on the possibility of housing those not immediately relocated to third countries at a former U.S. base near Baghdad for up to six months.

The official said the United Nations had estimated in the past that about 800-900 of the residents had sufficient links to third countries to allow their resettlement, while another 1,000 were thought to want to return to Iran.

Another EU official said Ashton would call on EU states at a meeting of EU foreign ministers next week to take responsibility for those entitled to resettle in their countries.

“We have a deadline coming up,” he said. “We are doing all we can to make sure member states take their responsibility.”

The senior EU official was unable to estimate how many residents might be entitled to resettlement in EU countries. He said many claimed links to France and Germany but both countries showed a reluctance to accept them.

The EU removed the PMOI from its terrorism list in 2009, but it is still considered a terrorist organistion by other countries, including the United States.

The senior EU official said Iraq had issued arrest warrants for up to 120 of the residents, some of whom had helped Saddam in his campaigns against Iran and Iraq's Kurdish minority.

“I guess the Iraqis will want to put them on trial,” he said, adding that he did not think any EU country would want to give this group asylum.

The official said that while some EU countries were willing to take in limited numbers, the best hope for the others was for resettlement in countries such as Australia and Canada.

“The International community will do its best to relocate them, but it won't be easy because many people consider them (the PMOI) terrorists.”

The future of Ashraf's residents became uncertain in 2009 after the United States turned the camp over to the Iraqi government, which considers its residents a threat to security.

Amnesty International says they are subject to harassment by the government and denied access to basic medicine. More than 30 were killed in a clash with Iraqi security forces in April.

On Tuesday, members of the European Parliament called on Ashton to step up pressure on Iraq to extend the deadline for closing the camp. British MEP Struan Stevenson said residents would face “certain torture and execution” if sent back to Iran. (Reporting by David Brunnstrom; Editing by Jon Hemming)

http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/eu-to-urge-members-to-accept-iranian-dissidents

ASSOCIATED PRESS

BRUSSELS — An official says the EU’s foreign policy chief will urge the member countries to accept some of the Iranians living in a refugee settlement in Iraq.

Iraq’s government has said it will close Camp Ashraf, where more than 3,000 Iranian exiles are living, by the end of the year. The U.N. says at least 34 people were killed when Iraqi security forces raided the camp in April.

The refugees, many of whom seek to overthrow Iran’s clerical rulers, were taken in at the camp by Saddam Hussein’s regime decades ago.

EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton will appeal to all 27 members of the bloc next week, asking countries to take in Ashraf residents with ties to them, the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Thursday.

Others may return to Iran.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle-east/eu-to-urge-member-states-to-accept-iranian-exiles-in-refugee-camp-iraq-plans-to-close/2011/11/24/gIQAY4sNsN_story.html

Secretariat of the National Council of Iraqi Tribes – Press release

In the closing months of 2011, and with unbridled meddling of the Iranian regime in Iraq and its efforts to dominate our country’s affairs, our society is in a state of great concern and anxiety about the future and the fate of our country. The national partnership has not been materialized yet and the political agreements upon which the government was formed have been violated. Patriotic figures like Dr. Allawi, the leader of victorious bloc in the parliamentary elections, have been eliminated from the political stage; with democracy on the demise and dictatorship fortifying its grip on power. It was for this very reason that Dr. Allawi’s refusal to head the National Council for Strategic Policies is a nationalistic reaction and the desire of the Iraqi people who widely welcomed it. Clearly such a big rift undermines political legitimacy and popularity of the government which from the outset was to be a national partnership, underscoring the need, as indicated by many patriotic leaders, for the current situation to be rectified either through early elections or by the ‘Spring of Iraq’.

It was in such crucial circumstances that the National Council for Tribes of Iraq embarked on a nationwide campaign for dialogue with Iraqis in all provinces. It is a known fact that here in Iraq, the manner in which one treats opponents of the Iranian regime, is a significant criterion for independence and adherence to democracy. Unfortunately, during the past three years – since responsibility for camp Ashraf’s security was transferred to the Iraqi government, the residents of which are protected persons and have political asylum – rather than being respected, their rights have been violated excessively. An inhumane and tyrannical siege has been imposed on the camp, and its residents are deprived of the most basic needs. During numerous aggressions against the camp, a total of 47 residents were killed and more than 1000 wounded. Instead of heeding calls by the international community and Iraqi political factions – for an independent and international investigation – the Iraqi government has made an illegal announcement to close the camp and expel its residents by the end of 2011. No doubt, notification of this cruel and illegal decision for relocation of the residents to international parties and insisting on it is only a prelude to another massacre and is an Iranian demand. This decision was strongly condemned by the international community and Iraqi political factions including 94 Iraqi nationalist leaders and members of the parliament. It was on this basis that Iraqis throughout the country, from all walks of life, including 2,317 tribal sheikhs, 7,056 lawyers and jurists, 5,069 physicians, 10,297 engineers, 1,125 university professors, 2,091 writers and journalists, 516 clergymen, 45 human rights and social organizations, 119 provincial level officials condemned gross violation of the residents’ human rights, especially the illegal deadline to close the camp by year’s end, demanding that it be canceled by the government. The statement, signed till this moment by 1,050,000 Iraqis from across the country, including 375,195 noble Iraqi women, underscores the following points:
 
1- As the international community and the U.N. have announced repeatedly, we urge the Iraqi government to treat the Camp Ashraf residents in accordance with the international law, and  refrain from closing the camp and forcibly relocating or expelling its residents.

2- While stressing the need for MEK to remain in Iraq, as our special quests and until democracy is established in Iran, we insist that any attempt to relocate them within Iraq, as well as the 2011-end deadline, are merely excuses to pave the path for their slaughter as desired by the Iranian regime. We reject and condemn, with the strongest words, such efforts and urge the UN Secretary General, the UNHCR, the UNHCHR, the EU, the European Parliament, the speaker of the Iraqi parliament and Iraqi political leaders to take urgent actions to prevent another massacre.

3-We urge the UN Security Council to dispatch a UN contingent force and UN monitors to protect Camp Ashraf residents, who are protected persons under the 4th Geneva Convention, and prevent another aggression and slaughter which promises to be much larger, in scale, than previous instances.
 
4-We demand that the inhumane and illegal siege, especially the medical siege, imposed since early 2009 against the residents, be lifted and the psychological torture of the residents with 300 loudspeakers be stopped. These measures are in stark contrast with the Islamic teachings, Arab traditions and the international law and are enforced only at the request of the antihuman and anti-Islam rulers of Iran.
 
5-The Spain’s National Court’s ruling, carrying out investigation over the April 8 atrocities, and prosecution of its culprits serves our national interests which we welcome and underscore  because it exposes the Iranian regime’s meddling within the Iraqi government and its military and security organs and has been the source of many atrocities in Iraq. 
 
 Secretariat of the National Council of Iraqi Tribes
November 23, 2011

 http://www.ncr-iran.org/en/news/ashraf/11469-call-by-1050000-iraqi-citizens-the-deadline-for-closure-of-camp-ashraf-and-compulsory-relocation-of-its-residents-inside-iraq-sets-the-stage-for-another-bloodbath–

REUTERS

BRUSSELS, Nov 22 (Reuters) – The European Union urged Iraq on Tuesday to allow time for the United Nations to determine the status of residents of a camp of Iranian dissidents that Baghdad has threatened to deport by the year-end.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has been trying to arrange to interview the 3,400 residents of Camp Ashraf to see which of them qualifies for refugee status to permit their resettlement, but Iraq has not allowed this.

Members of the European Parliament called on EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton to step up pressure on Iraq to extend the year-end deadline it has set for the closure of the camp to allow the interview process to take place.
 
“The moment of truth is coming in this very difficult problem,” said Jean De Ruyt, a senior Belgian diplomat appointed by Ashton to work with the United Nations, Iraq and others to resolve the issue.
 
“Obviously the closure of the camp without a process of UNHCR to identify and organise the refugee status determination would bring a deadlock,” he said. “I hope that the Iraqi government will soon accept that this (process) takes place.”

De Ruyt said that if Iraq would not allow the interview process to take place at Ashraf itself, it was important that the residents were not “put in isolation or in jail”.
 
“To be sure that this process is organised in an orderly way the U.N. has to give some monitoring, has to reinforce its presence close to them,” he said.
 
De Ruyt told Reuters the European Union had “insisted very much” to Baghdad that the deadline for closure of Ashraf should be extended, but added, “Probably this will remain a red line for the Iraqis”.
 
Ashraf, some 65 km (40 miles) from Baghdad, is the base of the People's Mujahideen Organisation of Iran (PMOI), which mounted attacks on Iran before the U.S.-led removal of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in 2003.
 
The future of its residents became uncertain in 2009 after the United States, which lists the PMOI as a terrorist organisation, turned the camp over to the Iraqi government, which considers its residents a threat to security.
 
Rights group Amnesty International says they are subject to harassment by the Iraqi government and denied access to basic medicine. More than 30 residents were killed in a clash with Iraqi security forces in April.
 
Iraqi embassy counsellor Jwan Khioka told the European Parliament meeting that Iraq would stick to its plans to evacuate the camp, “and will transfer its residents to other camps in Iraq in preparation to deport them out of Iraq”.
 
Struan Stevenson, head of the European Parliament's Iraq delegation, said that the only place the residents could be deported to was Iran and added: “There is no question they would then face certain torture and execution.”
 
Esther de Lange, a Dutch member of the European Parliament and vice president of its delegation on Iraq relations, said it was time for the European Union, which removed the PMOI from its terrorism list in 2009, to put pressure on Iraq.
 
She said the EU could exert considerable leverage as Iraq's biggest development aid donor and a major trading partner.

“Please let us be a bit pro-active,” she told De Ruyt. “We should at least be working to extend this deadline.”
 
An adviser to the Iraqi government said this month Baghdad may extend the deadline — if a quick solution is found to resolve the issue of where the Ashraf residents should go.

De Ruyt said there had to be a U.N. process to determine the status of the residents first.
 
“For the moment nobody will welcome them because they are considered as a group which some countries consider as a terrorist group,” he said. “Only individual identification can bring a solution for the relocation of these people.”

(Reporting by David Brunnstrom)

 http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/eu-urges-iraq-to-allow-more-time-for-ashraf-solution

UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL

LONDON, Nov. 22 (UPI) — “History can be a great teacher … if we bother to remember it.” But, when it comes to the fate of Iranian dissidents in Iraq in Camp Ashraf, it seems history cannot be a teacher simply because we don’t want to bother to remember.

The situation is strikingly similar to the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II. The government of Iraq wants to resettle the 3,400 Iranian dissidents in Camp Ashraf to another location in Iraq. This is tantamount to their massacre.

Unlike during World War II, the world now enjoys from the good offices of the United Nations. Would the United Nations succumb to Iraqi pressure and fall into its trap to agree with resettlement in Iraq?

The Ashraf residents, protected persons under the Fourth Geneva Convention, are members of the principal Iranian opposition movement, the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, which Iran considers enemy No. 1.

During the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Ashraf residents remained neutral. The following year, the United States gave written guarantees to all of them that, in return for a voluntary disarmament, the United States would protect them. But, in early 2009, the United States handed over responsibility for the security of the camp to Iraqi forces. Since then, the camp has been under a punishing blockade, with residents deprived of basic services, such as access to proper medical help.

Ashraf was the scene of two armed assaults by the Iraqi army in 2009 and last April, when 36 people, including eight women, were killed and more than 300 were wounded.

At the behest of Tehran, the Iraqi government led by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki set Dec. 31 as the deadline for the camp to close. Given the experience of the two raids, there are no grounds for believing that in December the world wouldn’t witness another massacre of defenseless Iranian refugees.

In September, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, stating that the Iranian dissidents are asylum-seekers entitled to international protection, urged that Ashraf’s closure be delayed. Still, Baghdad insists that the December deadline be met. Iraq hasn’t the slightest interest in letting the UNHCR carry out its mission. Rather, by refusing to cooperate, it is creating the pretext to claim that no progress has been made and that the only solution is the forcible closure of the camp.

In a formal letter that the government of Iraq provided to a number of European institutions in November, a copy of which I obtained, Baghdad stated its objective is to evacuate the camp and transfer its residents to other camps in Iraq.

In several parts of that letter the government of Iraq unscrupulously pointed out this is done in view of its relationship with Iran and its interference in Iraqi affairs. Transferring Ashraf residents to other locations in Iraq is tantamount to issuing their death warrants.

Here are a few lessons I have learned in the past few years:

Assurances from Iraqi authorities are worthless and are actually more like ploys to deceive the international community. Six hours prior to the assault last April, the U.S. Embassy in Iraq received assurance from Maliki that there would be “no violence.” Lying to the U.N. representatives in Iraq is much easier than lying to the United States.

The Iraqi government is very good at lying and changing its version of events. During the April raid, despite videos showing Iraqi armed forces mowing the defenseless refugees down and armored vehicles rolling over them, Iraq’s official position was first that there were no casualties. When the corpses of dozens of refugees couldn’t be denied, Iraq said they had committed suicide.

If Ashraf residents are dispersed in small groups as the Iraqi government intends to do and the United Nations doesn’t oppose, without cameras and phones, Iraqi authorities would be able to torture and assassinate them in secret and claim they committed suicide.

Ashraf residents have shown utter flexibility to facilitate their relocation to third countries. While, legally they have all the right to stay in Iraq, they applied for asylum through the UNHCR. They even urged the UNHCR to start the process as quickly as possible and agreed to carry out individual interviews at a location under the full control of the UNHCR outside the parameters of the camp. Yet, the government of Iraq keeps pushing for one demand: Relocation in Iraq. The United Nations should notice the ominous objective of the Iraqi government.

The Iraqi plan is strikingly reminiscent of the “resettlement” plan of the Third Reich for Warsaw Ghetto residents. Ashraf residents would have to be suicidal to accept to be relocated in Iraq peacefully. Like the Warsaw Ghetto residents, those in Ashraf would have to resist any deportation order by any means they have.

The United Nations should show some encore and fend off Iraqi pressure by rejecting any notion of relocation inside of Iraq for Ashraf residents. Instead it should demand that that Iraq start to cooperate with the UNHCR and allow immediate interviewing of Ashraf residents to reaffirm their refugee status.

Meanwhile, the United States, European Union and United Nations should demand that the Dec. 31 deadline be extended. For the period of the final disposition and transferring Ashraf residents to third countries, U.N. monitors should be placed in Ashraf to guarantee their rights.

It is time for the United Nations to act as the guardian of international principles.

(David Amess, a Conservative Member of Parliament from the United Kingdom, is a leading member of the British Parliamentary Committee for Iran Freedom.) 

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Analysis/Outside-View/2011/11/22/Outside-View-UN-should-reject-plan-to-relocate-Iranian-dissidents-in-Iraq/UPI-19781321962900

National Council of Resistance of Iran – Press Release

NCRI – According to reports from inside the Iranian regime, Maliki has promised to transfer residents of Camp Ashraf to other localities before the end of 2011. Based on a plan dictated to the Iraqi government by Ghassem Soleimani, commander of the terrorist Quds Force and Danaifar, the Iranian regime’s ambassador to Iraq, Iraqi forces should transfer the residents to al-Mothanna prison in Baghdad.

In 2009, when  Iraqi forces took 36 residents of Ashraf hostage they were kept in the same facility for a period of time (See Photo).

According to the plan, the Iraqi Prime Minister office’s that controls the facility would falsely introduce it to international bodies as “an airport in Baghdad” in order to avoid sensitivity.  The Iraqi government tries to get international acceptance or acquiescence vis-à-vis the forcible relocation of the residents before the end of 2011 in order to carry out its plan for  large scale crime against humanity with more ease.
 
Al-Mothanna was used to be an airport in the past century, but it has been turned into a torture center. Several international bodies have issued reports on crimes committed by the Iraqi government in al-Mothanna .

In a shocking story on this torture center dated April 28, 2010 the Associated Press confirmed receiving reports that prisoners held in al-Mothanna had “suffered rape, electric shock and severe beatings.”

In a statement issued on November 20, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the President-elect of the Iranian Resistance, equated the forced transfer of Ashraf residents to sending them to their deaths.  She said that Ashraf residents would never accept any relocation inside Iraq unless their protection in the new location is guaranteed by US or UN forces.  She added that silence and inaction vis-à-vis a forcible relocation of Ashraf residents paves the way for another crime against humanity which is predictable and any cooperation with regards to their forced relocation is complicity in the crime.
 
Dr. Alejo Vidal-Quadras, Vice-president of the European Parliament and president of the International Committee in Search of Justice stated today in a communiqué:  “Ashraf residents have shown all kinds of flexibility; they have agreed to the European Parliament’s plan to be transferred to third countries, despite their obvious right to remain in Ashraf, where they have lived for the past 25 years; they have filled individual asylum application forms.  But they are not at all prepared to be forcibly displaced inside Iraq and one should not expect them to volunteer to be slaughtered.  If they are forced to be displaced, they will have no other option but to resist. ”

Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
November 22, 2011

Aswat al-Iraq