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At a major event in London's Queen Elizabeth II conference centre on Saturday, attended by 1,000 Anglo-Iranians, senior British jurists and MPs and US military experts called on the United Nations to intervene immediately to save the lives of 3,400 Iranian dissidents at Camp Ashraf and Camp Liberty in Iraq. They described Camp Liberty as a prison and called for the 400 Ashraf residents who recently relocated to Liberty to be immediately returned to Camp Ashraf or transferred to third countries by the UN.
Speakers at the conference included: David Amess MP (Con); Lord Clarke of Hampstead, former Labour Party Chairman; Dr. Matthew Offord MP (Con); myself; Lord King of West Bromwich (Lab); Gen. David Phillips (US), former Chief of Military Police and former Commander of all Police Operations in Iraq, which included the protection of Camp Ashraf; Col. Wes Martin (US), former Antiterrorism/Force Protection Officer of all Coalition forces in Iraq, and base Commander for Camp Ashraf; Professor Sara Chandler, Chair of the Law Society's Human Rights Committee; Geoffrey Robertson QC, former President of the UN Special Court for Sierra Leone; Professor Guy Goodwin-Gill, distinguished Professor from Oxford and expert in refugee matters in international affairs; Christina Rees, member of the General Synod of the Church of England and Chair of Watch (Women and the Church); Martha Jean Baker, representing the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF); Malcolm Fowler, of the Law Society's Human Rights Committee; Lady Corbett, wife of the late Lord Corbett of Castle Vale; and Dowlat Nowrouzi of the National Council of Resistance of Iran.
Conference chair David Amess MP said: "Camp Liberty is nothing but a prison. It is not a refugee camp. There are armed police inside the camp threatening the residents. There are surveillance cameras and sound bugs installed all around the camp to spy on the residents. There is no water at the camp. There is no electricity. And there is no basic infrastructure. The residents were not allowed to inspect the site before going there.
"Despite all the residents' goodwill to go there to begin the process of having the UNHCR re-confirm their refugee status, there has been a systematic effort to lay blame for the appalling situation at Camp Liberty on the residents themselves. But we will not remain silent against such demonization", Amess said.
Lord Clarke said: "We demand to know who is behind the demonization of the camp residents. We plan to create an investigative committee to find out who okayed the infrastructure and conditions of the camp for the first 400 residents to be transferred. We will expose the motives of those who knew about the conditions of the camp but still approved the residents' transfer, not least because we had warned time and again that the relocation of Ashraf residents to Liberty without minimum assurances by the UN and US would lead to great dangers and could be misused by the mullahs' regime in Iran".
Gen. Phillips described Camp Liberty as a "horrid gulag" and "concentration camp", and he urged the UN and US to intervene to prevent further violations of the rights of the residents there.
Lord King said: "We demand that the 400 residents at Camp Liberty are either immediately returned to Ashraf or transferred to third countries. But we will not accept their current worse-than-prison-like treatment. And we demand the immediate removal of all police, cameras and spying equipment from Liberty".
Col. Wes Martin said that the truth at Camp Ashraf and Camp Liberty was being trampled upon for the sake of appeasing the Iranian regime.
Speaking for the Law Society, Sara Chandler said: "The Law Society is committed to seeking the protection of the residents of Ashraf. We have seen the photos of [Camp] Liberty. It's a prison camp. It can't be called Liberty. It's a concentration camp. An investigation needs to discover and expose what kind of decision-making took place to create this abomination. We need to know what the participation of the United Nations was in the setting up of this camp".
If the basic requirements will not be satisfied, especially continuing the existence of armed forces inside the camp leads to a failure experience. Transferring of the rest of residents will not be possible, unless these 400 refugees move to the third country.
This is and excellent account of the conference. Thank you for portraying it so well.
Best Regards
Sia Rajabi
It is about time the UN stopped being complicit in the mistreatment of the residents of Ashraf and stood up to the bully Maleki which will not stop to appease his masters in Iran!
What is unifying them is the truth. That is all.
Most of these people have no other thing in common. Truth and a sense for humanity and justice binds them together. World without such people is not worth living. Thank you Lord Maginnis for presenting this magnificence to the world.
Ban Ki Moon, Catherine Ashton and co need to take responsibility for the mess in "Liberty" and stop the abuse by Maliki and his forces. Get the residents out immediately, and safely. Then process the remaining people in Ashraf where they are.
Camp Liberty is not a prison it is a concentration camp. Liberty is a fraud, if not the GoI would have allowed the Ashraf residents or their representative to visit the camp befor the residents where moved there.
@janinorge: The Judicial Branch has the last saying in a democracy. The MEK won seven consecutive courts in UK and EU, which rejecting the designation as "perverse". They have also won in French court in regard to charge of being a terrorist organization and also in US. You can dislike MEK for unfounded reasons that, but calling the terrorist while the British court have said otherwise is actually a breach of law. It is like calling a man murderer when the court have ruled that his is innocent.
This in the form of defamation which is the communication of a statement that makes a claim, expressly stated or implied to be factual, that may give an individual, business, product, group, government, or nation a negative image. This can be also any disparaging statement made by one person about another, which is communicated or published. It is usually a requirement that this claim be false and that the publication is communicated to someone other than the person defamed (the claimant). To out aside this fact is one's choice but then one would undermine the whole essence of democracy by putting itself above the law and court rulings.
As a photojournalist I can tell you there are many ways to frame a scene -- it is inherently a biased medium. I am sure the photographic evidence portrays a "truth" that is convenient, while at the same time this is UN established, temporary(!) location for processing of "refugees".
How is a high level of security not necessary for a group with a history of violence and labeled as terrorists?
Finally (and being brief): careful who you make friends with as it might just come back to bite you in the bottom! (that is both to the MeK in regards to Saddam and also to the long list of supports of the MeK)
(sorry if this is a double-post as I encountered an error when signing in)
A LETTER DATED 15 DECEMBER 1998 FROM THE SECRETARY-GENERAL, ADDRESSED TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE SECURITY COUNCIL states
Inspections of capable sites
Identification of the nature of activities at locations where undeclared dual-use capabilities may exist is an important aspect of monitoring activity. During the reporting period, teams conducted no-notice inspections at a number of sites that had not been declared by Iraq. Access to these sites was provided and inspections took place with one exception which was at a facility occupied by the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI). The site of this facility was declared as being not under the authority of Iraq. Discussions over access were left to the Commission and that organization. A dialogue has begun on this matter and the PMOI has accepted, in principle, that its sites are subject to access by the Commission.