In the greatest gathering held in Paris by the Iranian diaspora on June 27, 2014, many political figures and dignitaries attended and delivered speeches. Linda Chavez, former White House Director of Public Liaison and US expert to the UN Sub-Commission on human rights, was one of the moderators and speakers at the event. Following are excerpts of her speech in defense of the rights of Camp Liberty residents.

It is also been one more year that we have seen the deterioration of things on the ground for those 2400 brave people who are in fact kept in what is nothing more than a prison camp in Iraq, namely Camp Liberty. And if things were bad one year ago in Camp Liberty, today they are in fact worst. We have seen more brutal attacks and since the last time we met we have seen 52 brave persons executed at the hands of those aligned with the Maliki government and at the direction of those in Iran. We have seen the kikidnappingf individuals whose fate we still do not know.

We have also seen in the last few weeks, a terrible deterioration of condition on the ground in Iraq generally, but more specifically at Camp Liberty. On June 12th UNAMI left, despite its directions to be there to oversee the protection of those residents. On June 15th we saw the UNHCR and UNAMI both having vacated the premises of Liberty and they have not yet returned. We have also seen that for the last 10 days, Iraqi forces who were supposedly on the outskirts of Camp Liberty to protect the residents, turn their machine guns not against those who would attack Camp Liberty, but against the residents of Camp Liberty. We have seen the western T-walls of the camp, officers of the Ashraf suppression committee who are there in fact to begin an attack when they see the most opportune time on the residents of Camp Liberty. We have also seen at the request of the Iranian regime that they have a plan in place, that if in fact there is movement on the ground towards Baghdad, that those who are in Camp Liberty will in fact be slaughtered. At the same time, the regime is making the absolutely absurd allegation that the residents of Camp Liberty are building tunnels underneath in order to escape and join the forces of those who are attacking the Iraqi Government. This in an outrage, this is a lie, this is a fabrication, and it is a fabrication that is in fact being put forward to justify an attack on those residents. Finally, the concrete bunkers that have been purchased, that were there to protect those residents of Camp Liberty are not in fact in place. There are 17500 T-walls that have been sent there, that have been piled up outside the police station in Camp Liberty. Only %4, seven hundred and fifty of those have actually put into place.