PRNewswire
More than 30,000 Sign Petition to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
BERKELEY, Calif., Oct. 21, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — A groundswell of American people from all walks of life have petitioned the U.S. Government to remove the main Iranian opposition organization, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), from the State Department’s Foreign Terrorist organization list. The more than 30,000 people who signed the letter to Secretary of State Clinton join a growing roster of prominent American national security experts and human rights advocates who believe the designation is unjustifiable, inhumane and counter to U.S. interests. More than 4,000 parliamentarians around the world have called for the delisting MEK in parliamentary declarations and one hundred thousand Iranians rallied on June 18, 2011 in Paris demanding delisting.
The petition is to be delivered to the State Department for the attention of Secretary Clinton next week.
As the main opposition group to the regime in Iran, the MEK has endorsed democratic institutions, secular governance, an end to Iran’s nuclear program, and broad expansion of human rights. The group has come under violent persecution by the Iran regime and its proxies, including two major attacks against the group’s increasingly vulnerable base in Iraq known as Camp Ashraf.
The United Kingdom and the European Union removed the MEK from their blacklists in 2008 and 2009, following findings by courts that the group is not engaged in terrorism.
“Nearly 3,400 members of the MEK presently live in Camp Ashraf in Iraq. In 2009, against the wishes of the residents, the U.S. transferred the responsibility for protection of Ashraf to the Iraqi authorities. Since then, there have been two unprovoked attacks by Iraqi forces, killing dozens of innocent and unarmed residents and seriously wounding hundreds. We fear that another attack on Camp Ashraf is imminent if immediate action, including delisting, is not taken,” said Ross Amin, Vice President of the Iranian-American Community of Northern California.
While under U.S. protection, every resident of Ashraf signed an agreement in which they confirmed their rejection of violence and terrorism. In return the U.S. promised to protect them until their final disposition.
Still, the perilous situation at Ashraf remains a matter of grave concern, and the signers of the petition called it the “legal and moral duty” of the United States to protect the residents of the Camp.
SOURCE: Iranian Community of Northern California
