Tuesday, 13th September 2011
Speech to plenary session, Strasbourg - Camp Ashraf Crisis
SPEECH TO PLENARY SESSION, STRASBOURG
13th SEPTEMBER 2011-09-14
CAMP ASHRAF - NORTHERN IRAQ
Can I use this opportunity to raise a question of great sensitivity and urgency? I refer to the crisis in Camp Ashraf in Northern Iraq, home for the past quarter century to more than 3400 Iranian dissidents, who, as you know, have suffered repeated attacks and harassment by the Iraqi authorities, culminating in a massacre of 36 unarmed civilians on 8th April this year.
As you know, Commissioner, Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki has given the camp's residents a deadline for clearing Ashraf of the end of December this year. The clock is ticking rapidly and although we have brokered an EU plan for re-settling the residents to third countries, and indeed some EU Member States and even some countries outside the EU have already started to accept some of these refugees, we are running out of time and facing the prospect of another violent attack and bloodshed perhaps on a scale similar to Srebrenica.
I have now received information from UNHCR that the residents of Ashraf are protected under international law, but can I urge the Commission to follow the example of UN High Commissioner Antonio Guterres and write to Nouri al-Maliki, seeking an extension to the end-of-year deadline, to give us time to work on the re-settlement proposal? Can the Commission also support the positioning of a UN team inside Ashraf to make real the UNHCR's pledge of protection? I urge you, Commissioner Füle, to please ask Baroness Ashton to re-double her efforts to save these people from further attacks and to help with their re-settlement to EU Member States before it is too late.
STRUAN STEVENSON, MEP
President of the European Parliament's Delegation for Relations with Iraq.
