A British Parliamentary session was held on December 10th on the International Human Rights Day by British MPs from both houses. Speakers at the session condemned the Iranian regime’s gross human rights violations and stressed on the necessity to hold the regime accountable for its crimes against PMOI members and their family members.
In that session, Tahar Boumedra, former SRSG in Iraq Advisor on Camp Ashraf exposed how the UN was turned into ‘an instrument in hands of the Iraqi Government’ in the Ashraf dossier.
Following is the excerpts of his speech:
The (experience) I had in Iraq with the Ashrafis and with the government of Iraq and also with the Iranian diplomats. I spent one and half year dealing with the issue of Ashraf and I would like to go briefly to the situation that is there now in camp Liberty. In fact the whole thing started when the Ashrafis were complaining that they are here locked up and at the time camp Ashraf was handed over to the government of Iraq.
They were locked up in Ashraf before they were transferred. They said we are locked up here and we want a credible interlocutor to speak to. So this credible interlocutor naturally should be the UN. So we sat down and I have personally sat down with them and we discussed what is the solution to this situation. We thought that it would be appropriate for the two sides, the government on one side and the Ashraf representative on the other side to discuss.
Before the arrival of the special representative of the secretary general of UN we were genuinely thinking about a signage that would preserve the dignity, safety and security of the Ashrafis. We trusted a memorandum of understanding to protect, then came ambassador Kobler, I advised him and said to him the UN charter says the people, charter is to protect the people not the governments yet it is the government that put down that charter to protect the people. So, from initial draft we put down in order to protect, it was reversed to an instrument to persecute. We argued that indeed Ashraf is a 25 years place of residence of these people. Why should we send them out of this place? Why should we relocate them? We could do exactly the same job from Ashraf and find an exit directed from Ashraf.
Now that was not really the intention, the real intention of MoU is to put pressure on the Ashrafis to distance themselves from the MEK. We discussed this around the table while we were drafting the MoU. What is the best way of distancing this population which is caught in Ashraf and totally against their will? So we are here the UN to free these people to get them out MEK and send them back to Iran. That was absolutely the aim of MoU and you noticed that MoU was signed by Kobler on behalf of the UN because within the UN organization there are some different organizations. It was between UNAMI, UNHCR and the government of Iraq. The UNHCR said no, we do not want to be part of this. So, Kobler signed on behalf of the whole organization and made it an instrument for relocation.
But we technically discussed it around the table, this is not relocation, this is an eviction, a forcible eviction. There are rules and regulations for forcible eviction. According to the UN fundamentals when you evict somebody from their house, you give them the alternative of same standards or better. We decided that it is relocation, we would preserve the safety and dignity of these people, and we would give them camp Liberty.
I was the first one to visit camp Liberty and I was shocked because we were there on the ground where the Iraqi army was looting camp Liberty. We were there and we were observing this. But then the infrastructure of Liberty was not fit for accommodating 3400 people. Yet forget about better standards, it was a situation that was really unacceptable, and it was imposed on Ashrafis.
The point of MoU was that it is a voluntary relocation and also the role of Kobler is a facilitator. Here is a facilitator which as long as you impose you are not a facilitator. Then moving them to the camp, nobody accepted to move there, their principal issue is to leave Iraq not to leave Ashraf. So, the UN imposed on them to go to a camp, which I discussed in my previous discussion, we did falsified the documents, we even improvise pictures to show to the world and to the Ashrafis that this is based on acceptable standards.
Just one point that I would like to raise which has not been raised before is that of the properties. The MoU does not refer to property and remains silent. It is meant to be like that. We also discussed it and I raised the issue that what is going to happen to the properties, moveable and immovable properties.
We raised it but it was absolutely Kobler who said no we are not going to talk about this technicality in details, we will address it later. I said to him we are dealing with a forcible eviction, you cannot defer these people from their property. He said we will discuss it later. At the same time, the Iraqis our counterpart in the Ashraf committee was saying forget about the property, it is the Iraqi people’s property, we will not compromise on this.
So, Kobler noted that the Iraqis are not going to compromise about the property, they are claiming that it is the Iraqi people’s property, it is not mentioned in the MoU. It is clear to everyone who dealt with this issue that Kobler has mislead the international community and has mislead the Ashrafis not only on camp Liberty which is unfit to accommodate people but also on the verey important issue of the property.
Now, I want to also mention why the UN has been misled? We misled the Department of State, we misled the Foreign Office, simply because you have to be in Iraq, you have to be in Baghdad to imagine the situation where everybody who is in the green zone and has no access to anything and there are small places where people socialize. This report going all the way to the Department of State and the Foreign Office and other ministers of foreign affairs, because this is the kind of daily discussions which are basically founded under the RAND report, I assume that most of you have read the RAND report, and also the human rights watchdog report. These documents are basically UNAMI’s but if you want to read about Ashraf and the MEK issues these are the fundamental documents. And people come and go they want to know what is going on, we give them the RAND report. So, obviously when new diplomats arrive, they take the RAND report as a viable, and everything that is discusses whether in Australia, in America, in Canada or in Europe, it is based on those reports that UNAMI has never bothered to verify.
In fact, the UNAMI team in Ashraf we discussed the information in Ashraf daily and we always ended up basically confirming these reports, the RAND and Human Rights Watchdog reports, and we confirmed it on the ground and we confirmed it in our report. Unfortunately this situation is not being corrected as long as ambassador Kobler is there.
I could tell you in this place that there could be no solution to the issue of property and it will be more complicated and it will be exactly like the issue of investigating the massacre in camp Ashraf in both occasions, July 2009 and April 2011, two massacres the UN called for investigation but the Iraqis said forget the investigation, and there has never been any investigation and this is self-impunity that Kobler is approving.
I hear that we are moving toward the same faith as far as properties concern; there would be a day that they say forget it.
