Top UN expert: Camp Liberty residents must be protected

NCRI - United Nations institutions have a moral and legal obligation to protect members of the main Iranian opposition group facing persecution in Iraq, a senior member of the UN Human Rights Council’s advisory board has said. Several thousand members of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran, PMOI (Mujahedin-e Khalq, MEK), in Camp Liberty, near Baghdad, are facing a siege by Iraq’s government at the behest of the Iranian regime.

Professor Jean Ziegler, member of the Human Rights Council Advisory Committee, welcomed the August 5 public statement by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein denouncing executions in Iran.

“The delegates of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) here in Geneva have circulated an appeal to the members of the Human Rights Council Advisory Committee, which has its 19th session now here in Geneva. Most of the members of the Human Rights Council Advisory Committee have signed this appeal prepared by the National Council of Resistance of Iran,” Prof. Ziegler said.

He added that there are two important points in this appeal:

“The committee members support totally the statement of denunciation of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, who is a very authoritative and prestigious person, when he denounced in his appeal of August 5 the executions which go on in Iran, especially the arbitrary executions of political prisoners.”

“Secondly, we the human rights advisory board members who signed the appeal of the Mojahedin (PMOI) denounce and express our preoccupation with the situation in Camp Liberty.”

“Camp Ashraf is a refugee camp protected by international law where men and women of the Iranian Resistance resided under protection of international law. The people of Ashraf accepted voluntarily to move to Camp Liberty under the control of the United Nations. When they came to Camp Liberty where they are today, there were no conditions for dignified, peaceful, protected people living. There were two murderous attacks against Camp Liberty. There is still a permanent danger against the inhabitants of Camp Liberty who are freedom fighters, who are not terrorists, who are just people who give an example of democratic and peaceful resistance to a terrorist regime in Tehran.”

“We think – and I am speaking now as a member of the Advisory Board of the Human Rights Council for myself and colleagues who signed the appeal of the National Council of Resistance of Iran - we from the human rights mechanism here in Geneva have the obligation to protect Camp Liberty.”

“The international status of refugees entitles these men and women who live peacefully and are the incarnation of democratic opposition to a terrorist regime” to protection, he said.

“We have the moral and legal obligation under international law to assure the permanent protection of the people who live in Camp Liberty, who resist, who are an example for all free people of the world by their fight, by their patience, and by their determination.”

Prof. Ziegler summed up by expressing his “very deep admiration and gratitude to the men and women of Camp Liberty” for their continued determination to resist against the mullahs’ regime in Iran.