UK lawyers leading Camp Ashraf challenge

Law Society Gazette – 22 March 2012, by Hossein Abedini – At a glance one might ask why UK lawyers are doing all they can to help 3,400 Iranian refugees in a camp based some 3,000 miles away in Iraq. The two groups are not the most obvious pairing. For those of us following the issue, it is clear why the Law Society, Bar Human Rights Committee and others from the UK legal system are so passionate about the dire situation facing the residents of Camp Ashraf.
I have read about the atrocious treatment and, on many occasions, killing of the camp’s residents and do not have to go over those details again. What I will say is that the situation in Camp Ashraf has not improved and its residents are gradually being moved to a new base, inappropriately named Camp Liberty, which fails to live up to any kind of acceptable living standards and resembles something more like a prison.
While the UN and US Department of State would prefer the move to Camp Liberty to be perceived as a great triumph, that is not the reality. Despite guarantees over the facilities in the new camp, the first residents who moved to Liberty found themselves in a much smaller habitat, a four-metre-high wall surrounds them manned by Iraqi forces who only last year massacred many Ashraf residents.
Sewage pipes have blown open, water is in limited supply and residents with terminal illnesses are being prevented from going to hospitals in Baghdad and Baquba.
This is only the tip of the iceberg, and it is no surprise that lawyers in the UK are standing up for the people of Camp Ashraf. This is about the denial of basic rights which form the foundations of any respectable legal system and should be afforded to everyone.
The UNHCR has given Camp Ashraf residents ‘asylum-seeker’ status with certain rights associated with this title, including ‘non-refoulement’ (not dispersed unwillingly), but that status is not being adhered to by the Iraqi prime minister and his forces.
While the UN is prepared to overlook this, solicitors and barristers, joined by MPs, members of the House of Lords, faith leaders and even former US military officials – veterans of the Gulf War – are not turning a blind eye.
Lawyers in the UK and from other countries are playing a crucial role in defending the rights of Ashraf’s people, not out of kinship but because UK lawyers are committed to promoting and upholding rights across the world.
As an outsider (non-lawyer) looking in, it seems that UK lawyers have, through choice, become the world’s rights defenders. It is in their nature.
The Law Society, Bar Human Rights Committee and other supporters are not challenging the Iraqi prime minister in the familiar court setting, but they are being heard on a much wider stage and voicing their opposition. There is nothing in it for them except the hope that Ashraf’s residents will secure the protection they deserve.
Ashraf is by no means the only place that UK lawyers have been vocal in defending the rights of those suppressed. I read in the Gazette about solicitor Nigel Dodds’ brave visit to Fiji to conduct a report on the situation there, and previously heard of efforts to help other lawyers around the world who have been prevented in their duties to uphold the rule of law.
Even here in the UK, I can see the legal fraternity challenging the government over the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill in the name of justice.
What is clear is that when the UN, US and other governments are, for whatever reason, not prepared to protect the human rights of civilians, lawyers have stepped in. It should not be that way, but I – and I am sure the residents of Camp Ashraf – welcome the work of the legal world.
There is clearly a long way to go. The residents remain destined for a very difficult life in their new camp, constantly under threat with an unknown future, or to face another massacre in Ashraf.
They, like others around the world, have much-needed support from lawyers in the UK. I hope more will join in the call for something to be done by the UN and US to safeguard the rights of the residents of Camp Ashraf.
Hossein Abedini is a member of parliament in exile of Iranian Resistance