IRAN FOCUS
Struan Stevenson MEP
Shame, shame, shame on the politicians in America and Europe who are sitting comfortably at home, enjoying their festive Christmas holiday with their friends and families, while rockets rain down on the 3,000 defenceless refugees in Camp Liberty in Baghdad. At least three more people have been killed and dozens wounded in the most recent of a series of barbarous and well-planned attacks, orchestrated by the regime of Nouri al-Maliki acting certainly on the instructions of the mullahs in Tehran.
We have warned again and again that Maliki’s guarantees of safety for the refugees in Camp Liberty were worthless and that it was Maliki himself behind the repeated bloody assaults on these Iranian dissidents. But the West has made lame excuses about ‘lack of evidence’ and ‘no concrete proof’, to avoid upsetting Baghdad or Tehran, where futile negotiations over the Iranian nuclear programme seem to have taken the place of any interest in basic human rights.
Now, while Western politicians sit happily at home, replete with Christmas feasts and over-indulgence, the killing continues un-abated. No longer are our warnings of further massacres being listened to. Clearly the US and EU have decided that 3,000 innocent and defenceless men, women and children must die. This is the depths to which our so-called humanitarian values have slumped. Shame, shame, shame!
Struan Stevenson MEP
President, European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations with Iraq