When a planning application is more newsworthy than a hunger strike . .

This morning BBC Breakfast news ran an item about the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square getting planning permission for new premises. They showed a picture of the roof and the flag. They didn't mention that only feet from the steps of the Embassy 12 people were entering the 50th day of a hunger strike aimed at drawing attention to the Iraqi assault on Camp Ashraf.

It's hardly a secret - but someone made the judgement call that the planning application was more newsworthy than the hunger strike.

Some media outlets have covered the protest - the mainstream broadcasters and publications have ignored it.

Whatever the history or politics of the PMOI may have been, 12 men and women care enough about the safety of their friends, relatives and fellow countrymen in Iraq's Camp Ashraf to put their lives at risk.

Maybe as far as the UK and US is concerned Iraq is a case of 'job done' - but not for those trapped in Ashraf. The deaths, injuries and arrests that took place between 28-30 July are a legacy of coalition involvement. Are we so morally bankrupt that we would rather give airtime to a planning application than the fact that 12 people are prepared to starve to death for what they believe in?

See: PMOI The attack on Camp Ashraf

http://www.mojahedin.org/pagesEn/

http://www.mojahedin.org/pagesEn/detailsNews.aspx?newsid=5889

By Melanie Phillips

SPECTATOR UK.

8th September 2009 - I wrote here about the attack at the end of July by Iraqi forces against the Iranian Opposition group the People’s Mujahideen Organisation of Iran (PMOI) ...

Ashraf protestors starve outside US Embassy

Fatemeh Khazeri, 44, holds a picture of her son and sister. Her sister is in Camp Ashraf.

Fatemeh had not eaten for 45 days when this picture was taken.

Photographer: Glyn Strong

A few yards away from the steps of the US Embassy 12 men and women are on hunger strike. Police keep a distant eye on them, passers-by and people queueing for visas cast curious glances at the makeshift shelter that has been their home for more than six weeks. Their mute appeal is a desperate attempt to get help for their friends and relatives in the refugee enclave of Camp Ashraf.

Laila, who has been battling furiously to attract media attention to their plight told me: "The people in Ashraf are the cream of Iranian society. They are intellectuals, enlightened and secular - the antithesis of Islamic fundamentalism. Their leaders are women, they believe in equality and freedom."

Their suffering is documented in a book that makes sobering reading. It lists the thousands who have died or disappeared, picturing many of them and the tortures they endured. Some of the hunger strikers point to the names or pictures of family members. Laila's husband is one of them. This chilling book of the dead is called "Fallen for Freedom. 20,000 PMOI Martyrs".


At the end of July Iraqi security forces launched an assault on Iranian refugees under their protection in Camp Ashraf, a relatively unknown enclave situated in Diyala province, 120 km west of the Iranian border and 60 km north of the Baghdad.

Eleven were killed, 500 hundred wounded and 36 taken into custody. Since then no international journalists have been allowed access to interview eye witnesses or victims.

Fears of a second, even bloodier massacre, are mounting unless the International community intervenes.

Ashraf is a ‘safe haven’ where residents were recognised in 2004 as protected persons under the 4th Geneva Convention. They are members of the People’s Mujahedeen Organisation of Iran (PMOI), a group politically opposed to the current regime and, for their own safety, living in exile.
The camp’s uniformed attackers used live ammunition, truncheons, axes, sickles, tear gas, hot water cannons, and bulldozers against the defenceless residents. US forces allegedly stood back and filmed the carnage but no media were present. Despite protests from Journalists Without Borders no unaligned reporters have been allowed into the camp since the assault. Only Iranian TV, the Arabic channel of Al-Alam and the Press TV have been given access and all reported in favour of the Iraqi police.

Extensive video evidence of the attack was captured on mobile phones and widely posted on the internet.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqC61sddaFs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJwiK5S_W1s - Iraqi police beat unarmed civilians in Camp Ashraf
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMnPSqesQlg - Civilians shot and killed by Iraqi police in Camp Ashraf
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPhD1wotzzQ - Iraqi police with gun aiming at people
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1thwPuuRoQ - Head injuries in Camp Ashraf medical centre
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1bKngVzLO8 - Seriously injured civilians in Camp Ashraf medical centre
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVmdFDvShpc - Civilians shot by Iraqi police in Camp Ashraf http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6DKL3-f4aQ - More attacks on Ashraf residents http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdGH_Ic88Xc - The second half of this short clip shows Iraqi armoured vehicles trying to run over the residents
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gi_dc3rJ82c - Female residents of Ashraf attacked by Iraqi police
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02cx4X6Lyzk


The lack of international response and paucity of media coverage sparked worldwide protest among outraged relatives of the Ashraf victims and other Iranians and in London 12 are on hunger strike. For some their fast is entering its seventh week.

They are beginning to experience acute symptoms- internal bleeding, loss of vision and multiple organ failure. One woman has suffered a heart attack. The youngest is a 19 year old girl.

In a statement issued on 11 September 2009 Amnesty International expressed its deep concern to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki about the killings and other abuses committed by Iraqi security forces and the continuing detention without charge or trial of the 36 camp residents.
In its letter to Prime Minister al-Maliki, Amnesty International urged him to establish immediately a full and independent investigation into the methods used by Iraqi security forces when taking control of Camp Ashraf, and to make its findings public as soon as possible, The organisation urged him also to ensure that members of the security forces and other officials found responsible for using excessive force and committing serious human rights violations were immediately suspended from duty and promptly brought to justice.

The US disarmed Ashraf residents and signed an agreement with each of them to guarantee their protection until final determination of their status, but it handed over protection of Ashraf to the Iraqi government at the start of 2009.

Article 45 of the 4th Geneva Convention says “If a government fails to carry out the provisions of the Convention in any important respect, the government by which the protected persons were transferred (in this case the US) shall, upon being so notified by the protecting government, take effective measures to correct the situation or shall request the return of the protected persons. Such request must be complied with.” After the massacre in Ashraf, the US has a duty to request that Iraq hand back protection of the camp.

UN Security Council resolution 1883, adopted in August 2009, gives the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) a mandate and responsibility for the case of Ashraf.
Prominent UK lawyers have produced a legal report, supported by international colleagues, that outlines the legal requirements for UN and US intervention – as well as the criminal ramifications of the action of the Iraqi forces.

The hunger strikers demands are:

1. Iraqi police withdraw from Ashraf and release the 36 people taken hostage and allow the residents access to lawyers, doctors, journalists and their relatives.
2. US forces temporarily assume protection of Ashraf under Article 45 of the 4th GC until an international force can take over.
3. An international force takes over protection of Ashraf and the UNAMI immediately stations an international monitoring team inside the camp to prevent further attacks.
4. UN bodies reiterate clearly that the “principle of non-refoulement” forbids forced displacement of Ashraf residents within Iraq.

Freedom for one - a prison for millions

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/free-at-last-student-in-hiding-after-karzais-intervention-1782909.html

Suspended Afghan MP Malalai Joya was one of the first to react to the release of journalism student Parvez Kambaksh. She said “My first thought when I heard of his release was relief that his months of detention and pain were over.

“Karzai kept him in prison to gain the support of fundamentalists and keep them happy until the voting was over. Now, he has freed Kambaksh in a bid to present the rigged and fraudulent elections as free and fair – to throw dust in the eyes of the world and fool people into thinking that freedom of speech is not dead in Afghanistan. But this does not mean that the Afghan people enjoy democracy.

“Journalists continue to be threatened, murdered and forced to flee the country. They are constantly under pressure from the fundamentalists and cannot publish a single word against any of them. Censorship is rampant. The only newspapers allowed to be published are those that do not target foreign occupiers, fundamentalist criminals and druglords.

“I hope that while benefiting from the situation in the West, Kambaksh never forgets that Afghanistan, dominated by Northern Alliance, National Front, Taliban and Al-Qaeda terrorists, is still a huge prison for millions of his oppressed people.

“Thousands of his supporters, within and outside the country, are looking to him to continue his struggle for independence, freedom and democracy against the fundamentalists and their masters.”

The life and death of Sitara Achakzai

Sitara Achakzai was a vivacious and intelligent woman, one of only four female members of the Kandahar Provincial Council. Although she worked hard to improve the lot of her constituents, as a member of the Afghan government she was a target, and the "enemies of Afghanistan" (a.k.a. the Taliban) gunned her down one afternoon in April this year (2009). I didn't have the privilege of knowing her personally but thankfully someone who did made a remarkable film. It is now on view at:

http://galleries.lernerphoto.com/sitara2 <http://galleries.lernerphoto.com/sitara2>

And also on :http://theworld.org/2009/07/29/the-life-and-death-of-sitara-achekzai/ <http://www.theworld.org/2009/07/29/the-life-and-death-of-sitara-achekzai/>

A tribute to Natasha

Malalai Joya was the second recipient of the RAW in WAR Anna Politkovskaya Award in 2008. The first recipient, Natalya Estemirova who handed it on to her, was assassinated just a few days ago (July 15th).

A courageous human rights defender and freelance journalist from Chechnya, 'Natasha' was kidnapped and murdered because, like Malalai Joya, she refused to keep silent or abandon her commitment to exposing injustice in her country.

Since 2000 and throughout the armed conflict in Chechnya, she worked for Memorial, Russia’s biggest human rights organisation. Natasha was Anna Politkovskaya's close friend and colleague. She was Anna’s most frequent companion during travel and investigations in Chechnya. They investigated a number of cases together – about which Anna wrote for “Novaya Gazeta” . Natasha wrote for Memorial’s website and for local newspapers.

Half-Russian, half-Chechen she also acted as Anna's interpreter in Chechnya and went everywhere with her. After graduation Natasha taught history in Chechen schools, then in 1991 she became one of the leaders of a teachers’ strike demanding better pay and better conditions.

During the armed conflict between the Russian Republics of Ingushetia and North Ossetia in 1992, Natasha helped bring refugees to safety and helped free hostages. During the first war in Chechnya in 1998, she collected testimonies from civilians who were tortured by the Russian forces in unofficial detention facilities, the so-called “filtration camps”. She produced a TV series and wrote articles in the Chechen newspapers about the prisoners in those camps.

Her last published article in the UK, on the abductions and abuses still going in in Chechnya under President Ramzan Kadyrov, appeared in The Independent on Friday 17 July, 2009. It was written in August 2008 but never published.

Bombs will kill women in Afghanistan

Bombs will kill women in Afghanistan

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Malalai Joya - Raising Her Voice.

“A burqa is like a shroud for the living” Malalai Joya told me two years ago, “yet it has often saved my life”.

Joya is not her real name. It was adopted in homage to another visionary Afghan activist, Sarwar Joya, who after a lifetime fighting for democracy, freedom and women’s rights, was imprisoned and later murdered for his ideals. So far Malalai has survived five assassination attempts and expects more.

At 25 she was the youngest member of the Afghan Parliament and it is a miracle that she has reached the age of 30. This year she has to decide whether to stand for re-election. If the people of Farah province wish her to, she probably will, but the suspension that denied her a salary, office, staff or official protection has only increased her contempt for the ‘mask of democracy’ that she claims is worn by the Afghan Government. Her ‘crime’ was comparing Parliament to ‘a stable or a zoo’ in which some members behaved like animals. This ‘insult’ effectively prevented her from operating as an MP for most of the parliamentary term; something of an irony given that those who publicly threw bottles at her in the chamber and threatened her with murder and rape were never disciplined.

To some Afghans she is a heroine, like the legendary Malalai of Maiwand, who rallied faltering forces to drive out the British in 1880; to others she is well meaning but ‘too radical’. To powerful enemies she is a nemesis, a Fury who refuses to be silenced about unpunished rapes, murders, acts of corruption or intimidation. To me she is a brave and most remarkable woman.When we first met, at the house of a supporter in Kabul, Malalai was accompanied by just one female companion. Unfailingly gracious she thanked us for coming to Afghanistan to hear her story and offered us tea and refreshments.

Over the days that followed I marvelled at the stamina of this tiny woman who rarely seemed to be ‘off duty’, had little sleep and virtually no personal possessions. As we got to know each other she shared her life story with me; exiled at the age of four to a refugee camp, separated by conflict from her father who was injured by a landmine, she was hungry for education from an early age. By her late teens she was back in Afghanistan, operating covertly as a teacher of girls in Herat, under the harsh regime of the Taliban.“Another thing the burqa was good for was hiding books,” she once confided, “although I always found it difficult to walk in one and my father said he could always recognise me because I waddled like a penguin!”During my first visit I tried on Malalai’s burqa. It was too short, but I instantly felt the claustrophobia she had described, the disorienting lack of peripheral vision and clamminess that accompanied being swathed in a garment of man-made fibre in a hot country.

Since losing her official status and diplomatic passport Malalai has found it difficult to travel freely in Afghanistan and out of it. But supporters worldwide have embraced her and she has been honoured in many countries including Germany, Italy, Holland and the UK. Six female Nobel Peace Laureates have called for her to be reinstated.In spite of the dangers and difficulties Malalai continued to champion the cause of abused women and girls, men as well as women who had been intimidated by warlords and child rape victims.

One of the many she introduced me to was 12-year-old Bashira who she describes in her book.“I met Bashira and her father in Kabul in the presence of British journalist Glyn Strong, who later made a short documentary about the case. Bashira was so distraught after the rape that she tried to burn herself to death. Her hands still bore the scars when I met her. Her lovely young face was creased with worry as I held her against me and listened to her agonising story.
“Everyone was weeping as she and her father described the assault and the horrors that followed. Her father said that his daughter’s rapists tried to bribe him to drop the case, and when he refused, they had him beaten so badly he spent two weeks in hospital. But despite his complaints, the authorities and the courts turned a blind eye to his plea for justice. When Glyn asked Bashira why she came to see me, she said, while crying bitterly, ‘Because she speaks the truth.’ This poor girl and her father could find no one to stand up for them.”

Malalai Joya visited England for the first time last year to receive the Anna Politkovskaya Award for human rights activity. This year, at the end of July, she is due to return, to launch the book that tells the story of her life – ‘Raising My Voice’.It is as simple and uncompromising as Malalai herself; an engaging but unembellished account of a close family displaced by war, reunited then forced apart again by danger. The world knows Malalai Joya the activist, but she is also a wife, a daughter and a sister - a young woman whose life is so different from that of her British counterparts that it defies description.She travels alone, conscious of how much capital her enemies seek to make out of every journey she takes. She is uncompromising and has told British politicians to their faces that their troops are an occupying force that has become part of the problem, not the solution.“One country cannot donate freedom to another” she regularly tells journalists.

Recent American bombardment of her own (Farah) province resulted in countless civilian casualties, something she finds difficult to speak of. Instead she urges President Obama to focus on an exit strategy rather than a troop surge: “Escalation will only create more terrorists and more hatred of the United States, while bringing only more misery and devastation to my country.” Joya says “At one time America was spending $100m a day in Afghanistan for the war; this amount will have increased, but figures have not yet been published. Total international aid for reconstruction comes to only $7m a day, the vast majority of which falls into corrupt hands, never reaching those who need it.

“Afghanistan needs real humanitarian aid and help with reconstruction. The Congressional Budget Office says that the United States will spend 2.4 trillion dollars over the next 10 years on the ‘war on terror’. If, instead, they spent this money properly and honestly, not only could Iraq and Afghanistan be made into heaven on earth but, also, world poverty could be eliminated.” To Joya, the fact that they do not is simply further evidence that US/NATO involvement is driven by regional, economic and strategic interests rather than altruistic concern for the Afghan people. “As it stands, huge sums of taxpayers’ money are being poured into a counterproductive war, while urgently needed social spending at home is neglected. I have seen the poor and the homeless on the streets of wealthy Western cities. The homeless are humans too – I do not understand how their governments can ignore their suffering. The money needed to alleviate their pain never reaches them, just like the money that has poured into Afghanistan has never reached the poor who so desperately need it.”

Malalai and I were together in 2007 when the deaths of two British troops were announced. She didn’t want them in her country but she expressed sorrow for their families. “Loss of loved ones is something we understand” she told me.

*When I started writing this piece 167 British troops had lost their lives in Afghanistan. Before I finished it a 168th had been added – the beloved son a friend who was serving with 2 RIFLES in Helmand. Even more have died since.

*RAISING MY VOICE by Malalai Joya is published by Rider on 16 July 2009, priced £11.99.

MALALAI JOYA www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/3668254/Malalai-Joya-courage-under-fire.html http://www.malalajoya.com/

GLYN STRONG http://www.glynstrong.co.uk/

BASHIRA’S STORY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABPSao6S_7A