Associated Press, United Nations (excerpts) – Iranian demonstrators ended a 65-day vigil outside U.N. headquarters Monday and headed to Washington to seek assurances the United States will continue protecting family and friends inside Iraq who oppose the Iranian government.
Across from the U.N., demonstrators held signs, chanted and made speeches until Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed concern about the Iranian dissidents living at Camp Ashraf, which the Americans may hand over to the Iraqis. Now, they are converging on a park across from the White House.
“It’s now time to focus on the U.S.,” said Nasser Rashidi, head of the National Coalition of Pro-Democracy Advocates, a Virginia-based Iranian-American human rights group.
For more than two decades the camp has housed members of the Mujahedeen Khalq, also known as the People’s Mujahedeen Organization of Iran.
“They cannot express their voice about anything,” said Moslem Filabi, a former wrestler on the Iranian national team. He said it was his duty to speak for others as a declared national hero, having represented Iran at three Olympics and won 17 medals at international competitions before leaving Iran in 1982, three years after the revolution.
Last week, Ban told the Security Council, the U.N.’s most powerful body, that the U.N. political mission in Iraq is closely monitoring the camp.
Its residents are protected by the U.S.-led multinational force, and since July 2004 the U.S. has recognized the camp’s residents as “protected persons” under the Geneva Conventions.
But Iraq’s government wants to take “full control of the camp in the near future,” Ban said. Because of that, he said, the U.N. wrote Iraq to ensure it will “protect Ashraf residents from forcible deportation, expulsion or repatriation … and to refrain from any action that would endanger their life or security.”
Neither U.S. nor Iranian officials provided any immediate comment Monday. But earlier this year some members of U.S. Congress such as Missouri Democratic Sen. Kit Bond and California Democratic Rep. Bob Filner wrote U.S. military leaders to urge continued protection for Camp Ashraf.
The vigil continues, in a different place, with some demonstrators leaving jobs or traveling long distances to take part. A few shed tears outside the U.N. while recounting the dangers facing their family and friends, and the personal losses among what they said were 120,000 political prisoners executed in Iran during the 1980s.
“I had a family, four brothers and sisters, and I lost two of them,” Maliheh Salehyar of Toronto recalled between sobs over her recollections of rape, torture and murder. “And the other members of the Camp Ashraf, I feel all of them like my brother and sister. I have no family here now.”