BARNET Anglo-Iranians who went on hunger strike in support of the Iranian resistance were praised by politicians in Parliament today.

Lord Anthony Clarke of Hampstead and a visiting representative from Iran's resistance government in exile both paid tribute to those who refused food for up to 72 days earlier this year, linking their protests to those which have rocked Iran since Monday.

Lord Clarke said: “I still have in my mind those people outside the US Embassy as they lay in their beds on hunger strike in the centre of London.

“I remember saying it's better to live for Iran than to die but their determination was only something you could stand back and admire as they carried on.”

He said the British Government should hang its head in shame for remaining silent on human rights abuses in Iran.

Today a report published by Amnesty International described "patterns of abuse before, during and, particularly, after the June election".

“People are being killed, people are being tortured, people are being subjected to the most terrible brutality in the name of the appeasement,” Lord Clarke said.

Lord Clarke was speaking at a committee room meeting in the Houses of Parliament today called by The British Parliamentary Committee for Iran Freedom, a cross party group of MPs and Peers.

Parliamentarians warned of a massacre and even genocide if the British Government and others did not intervene to prevent the forced movement of the 3,500 members of Camp Ashraf by the Iraqi forces, which Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri Kamel al-Maliki has set for December 15.

Chairman of the committee, Lord Corbett of Castle Vale, said: “Unless there is a UN force there will be murder and massacre in the desert that's an absolute certainty, otherwise Iraqis will see this as a green light to do the bidding of their masters across the border.”

He said images of Iraqi troops attacking camp residents during a raid in July this year reminded him of the Gestapo.

And he appealed to Prime Minister Maliki: “Is this the face of the new Iraq that you want to show the world?”

Andrew Mackinlay MP, former Speaker Baroness Betty Boothroyd, Lord David Waddington, Roger Gale MP, Mark Williams MP, David Drew MP and Lord Albert Hilton were among those who expressed strong concern for Iranians both inside Iran and in Camp Ashraf, alongside shame that the British Government was doing nothing to help them.

Holding up a picture of a public hanging inside Iran, Lord Corbett said: “They do not do this because they are strong, they do this because they are weak.

“These are the people who stole democracy from people of Iran in 1979 and who in all but name have declared war on the people of Iran.

“How can a state that claims to be Islamic deny these thing to its people?

“It's a perversion of all the Koran is about.”

Golders Green solicitor Masoud Zabeti who has been involved in the legal campaign to prove the camp's inhabitants should be protected under the Forth Geneva Convention, was due to speak at the meeting but did not have time.

Speaking afterwards he said: “I'm absolutely certain that if the UN, US, EU and British Governments said that the displacement of Ashraf residents is unlawful the Iraqi Government wouldn't do what it's doing.

“The pressure from the Iranian regime is intolerable - there isn't the same pressure from the UN, US, British and the EU.”

Former Barnet resident Dowlet Norouzi, from the National Council of Restistance of Iran's foreign affairs committee, also spoke after the meeting, saying that images of hunger strikers from Barnet had given inspiration and strength to the resistance movement.

“I'm very grateful to the support from people in Barnet have given to our resistance movement. I've seen them participating in hunger strikes and in protests against the brutal and terrible Iranian regime.

“The people in Iran also see this and it makes them happy and grateful.”