Agence france Press (AFP), in a report wired from it’s Geneva office on Friday March 14, wrote: An exiled Iranian opposition group on Friday urged the international community to help lift the “blockade” of a refugee camp near Baghdad and called for an investigation into killings at a second camp.
“We are asking for the United States and the UN to intervene to immediately lift the medicine and food blockade” of Camp Liberty، said Maryam Rajavi، who heads the France-based National Council of Resistance of Iran.
Camp Liberty، a former US military base، houses some 3،000 members of Iran’s main opposition group، the People’s Mujahedeen Organisation of Iran (PMOI).
AFP added, “speaking on the sidelines of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva، Rajavi also regretted the increased “harassment، intimidations and provocations by Iraqi security forces” of those inside the camp.
“She told a conference that sick people were being blocked from visiting hospital and residents barred from bringing in building material to repair shelters damaged in a December rocket attack، which killed four people.
Washington، the EU and the UN should ask the UN Security Council to examine the situation in the camp “to avoid another humanitarian catastrophe،” she insisted.
On a similar report of the meeting, Middle East Online said, Jean Ziegler, a Swiss consultant to the Human Rights Council who also spoke at Friday’s conference, said the blockade of Camp Liberty was “a war crime, because they are starving civilians”.
“These people risk dying,” he said, calling for UN observers and peacekeepers to be sent to the camp.
Middle East Online, referred to the massacre of 52 members of PMOI in Camp Ashraf in last September, added: “Rajavi on Friday reiterated PMOI’s call for an “independent investigation” into the killings to prevent any “repetition of such crimes”.
Scores of PMOI members have been killed in more than a dozen attacks on their camps since US troops withdrew from Iraq at the end of 2011.”