Solidarity with Iranian hunger strikers

On 16 October representatives of unions, community groups and left wing political organisations gathered at Casselton Place in Melbourne to show support for five Iranians who have been camped there on hunger strike for five weeks.

The hunger strikers are attempting to draw attention to the massacre of Iranian refugees at Camp Ashraf in Iraq, carried out by the Iraqi military, likely at the behest of the Iranian regime. Fifty-two people were killed in the attack on 1 September, and another seven taken hostage. The latter are yet to be released.

Camp Ashraf was previously home to 3,400 Iranian exiles, most of them members of the People’s Mojahedin. According to Nosrat Hosseini, one of the spokespeople for the campaign, “This massacre is not an isolated event. There have been other attacks at the camp. Iraqi forces have subjected these refugees to the most cruel and inhumane punishments. They have shot them at close range. They have attacked them with axes. They have attacked them with rubber bullets, with water cannons and with other weapons.”

There are now as many as 3,000 people on hunger strike over this issue – the majority of them in Iraq, but with support from others across the world.

The Australian hunger strikers have two basic demands: one, that the seven hostages – six women and one man – be released and be free to travel safely to a country of resettlement, including Australia; two, that all of the Iranian refugees in Iraq be able to travel to countries of resettlement immediately, and that Australia make itself available as one of those resettlement countries.

The Australian government’s enthusiastic involvement in the criminal war on Iraq, launched by George W. Bush in 2003, means it has a particular responsibility to these refugees, whose situation today is a direct result of that war.

[Messages of solidarity can be sent to iranianwomensassociation@outlook.com.]