• Opponents of the Iranian government living in Iraq are being massacred

• International campaign demands security and safe passage for community under siege

Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU), October 23, 2013 – The five protesting on the corner of Spring and Lonsdale Sts join 3,000 others around the world who are forgoing food until the international community steps in to stop the killing of Iranian refugees in Iraq.

They have been moved to act following a massacre on September 1, which killed 52 people.

Desperate
Mohammad Sadeghpour is one of the Melbourne hunger strikers. He has been campaigning for democracy in Iran since being granted asylum here in 1997.

Many members of Mohammad’s family have been killed at the hands of the brutal Iranian regime. The latest wave of terror unleashed against his people living in Iraq has driven him to despair. He says he is willing to stay outside the DFAT office for as long as it takes to get the world to act .

Iran is ruled by a strict authoritarian regime that prevents fair elections, uses the death penalty widely and brutally represses trade unions.

Resistance to Iranian regime
Like his fellow hunger strikers, Mohammad is aligned with the Iranian opposition group, the People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iraq (POMI). This group helped overthrow the Shah’s dictatorship in 1979 and fought the imposition of strict Islamic law by the Ayatollahs who assumed power after the revolution.

Facing severe repression, many fled to Iraq where they established a large exile community at Camp Ashraf, near Baghdad. Throughout the 2003 invasion and the civil war they remained neutral. Since the handover of security in 2009, they have come under deadly attack from Iraqi security forces who are believed to be cracking down on the POMI on behalf of Iran.

On September 1 this year Iraqi forces attacked residents of Camp Ashraf, killing 52 and taking seven hostage.

Urgent action required
The POMI community in Iraq is under siege. The latest attack is part of a campaign to force these people out of the country.

Sadly, this human rights emergency has not received the attention it deserves in Australia. Mohammad, his fellow hunger strikers in Melbourne and many more around the world are willing to do whatever it takes to make the international community take action.

They are demanding that the remaining residents of Camp Ashraf and those forcibly moved to another base, ‘Camp Liberty,’ be provided security by the United Nations while arrangements are made to resettle them in other countries.

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