Human Rights Abuse in the MEK

Human Rights Declaration; MKO Version

The Mujahedin Khalq ringleaders are desperate to use any means possible to gain the support and favor of the West. They stage rallies, hold conferences and events and hire prominent political figures as paid speakers to speak out on their behalf.

The latest show of MKO was held on the eve of Human Rights Day in Paris, in which Maryam Rajavi marked the Human Rights Day and also tried to link its group to Nelson Mandela as his funeral and commemoration of his life and legacy was coincided with the HR Day. Needless to say that Mandela was a global symbol for the struggle for Human Rights.

The sight of Maryam Rajavi offering condolences for the passing away of Nelson Mandela was disturbing, considering that her husband as the fugitive leader of her group actively opposed and criticized Mandela’s legacy.

Unlike Mandela, who earned profound international respect, Rajavis cannot claim that they have sought to establish policy and practice in order to protect fundamental Human Rights.

Despite concrete evidences and most shocking examples of the group’s callous disregard for Human Rights, the deceitful cult leaders claim charming support for democracy and Human Rights.

On MKO website under the title of “NCRI position on Human rights” the third Agenda is: [the NCRI] “Promotes and adheres to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights”. [1]

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is a declaration adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948 at Palais de Chaillot, Paris. The Declaration represents the first global expression of rights to which all human beings are inherently entitled. [2]

This UDHR is proclaimed as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive to promote respect for the rights and freedoms entitled and enlisted in the 30 articles of the declaration.[3]

Based on the agenda inserted on its website, the Mujahedin Khalq Organization aka MKO/MEK/NCRI has obliged itself to respect the Human Rights declaration. Thus the group should implement it within its own organization as a sample society of the bigger it wishes to create and govern. Yet the group doesn’t apply even one out of 30 articles of the Declaration. U.N. envoy Martin Kobler accused the leaders of Mujahedin Khalq of human rights abuses. Kobler told the Security Council:" Of increasing concern are the human rights abuses in Camp Hurriya itself by the camp leadership,…Hundreds of daily monitoring reports suggest that the lives of Camp Hurriya members are tightly controlled."[4]

A glance at the Declaration’s articles shows that none of them are being applied by the group.

To name some; the third article of the HR declaration reads: “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.”  The forth articles reads:” No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.” And the fifth Article reads:”No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”[5]

Yet according to Human Rights watch report the former MKO members reported abuses ranging from detention and persecution of ordinary members wishing to leave the organization, to lengthy solitary confinements, severe beatings, and torture of dissident members.[6]

The MKO violates the Article 9, which urges no unfair detainment.

According to Human Rights Watch report the MKO held dissidents in its internal prisons during the 1990s and later turned over many of them to Iraqi authorities, who held them in Abu Quraib.  One of the former MKO members interviewed, according to the report, recalled that during the mid-1990s a prisoner died after an intense beating. Two other former MEK members said they were held in solitary confinement for extensive periods of time, one for five years, and the other for eight and a half years.[7]

The MKO violates the article 12, which insists on the right to privacy. Nonetheless, authoritarian control, confiscation of assets, sexual control (including mandatory divorce and celibacy), emotional isolation, forced labor, sleep deprivation, physical abuse, and limited exit options are examples of the group’s leaders abusing the followers. [8]

The MKO violates the Article13, which urges the freedom to move and take residency.

According to the RAND report, to prevent MEK/MKO members from departing the camps, almost all MEK/MKO recruits were obliged to turn over their identity documents to the MKO for “safekeeping”. By bringing members into Iraq illegally and then confiscating their identity documents, the MKO was able to trap them. [9] Among the numerous references to the Mujahaddin e-Khalq (MEK) revealed by Wikileaks were cases of forced detention at Ashraf:"The MEK was also violating human rights by holding residents at Ashraf against their will."  [10]

The MKO violates the Article 14, which asserts the right to seek a safe place to live.

The deadly incidents in Camp Ashraf and Camp Liberty caused all concerned individuals to be worried about the fate and life of MKO members to be worried about their fate. All parties concerned have reached to the consensus that the only way to resolve situation of Camp Liberty residents is to relocate them somewhere out of Iraq. António Guterres, UNHCR chief insisted: “The residents of Camp Hurriya urgently need solutions to relocate out of Iraq".[11] Still the leaders of the group are reluctant to let members relocate to third countries as this way they will lost their cultic hegemony on members.

Martin Kobler, the former Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Iraq, several times deplored the lack of cooperation of the residents and of their leadership with the UNHCR and UN monitors. In an interview with The Associated Press in Baghdad Kobler said that “residents of an Iranian dissident camp are denied freedom of movement by the exile group.”[12]

Wendy Sherman, the Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs also noted that the MEK’s leadership in Paris was obstructing the process to resettle MEK members.[13]

The MKO violates the article 16 which avows the right of marriage and family.

Cult leaders instructed members not just to move into gender-segregated housing but also to divorce their spouses, maintain complete celibacy, and even cut off communication with friends and family, both within and beyond MeK compounds. Love for the Rajavis was to replace love for spouses and family. Martin Kobler former UN envoy in Iraq addressing the UN Security Council on July 2013 said that Camp Liberty residents are not free to “contact family members outside Iraq, or to have contact with other relatives even within the camp itself “  [14]

The MKO violates the article 18 which insists on the freedom of thought.

MKO members are required to keep daily records of their thoughts and nighttime dreams, as well as observations about their fellow members. They must submit their journals to their supervisors. The leadership requires members to study MKO ideology and to participate in indoctrination sessions that are characterized by a mix of propaganda and fear tactics. Group members are required to watch films of the Rajavis’ speeches. They are allowed to listen and watch only the group’s own broadcasts. The members are allowed to read only internal reports and Bulletins. Violators are punished. [15] The increasing number of defections and those willing to leave the Camp Liberty has caused the leaders to push more pressure on members implementing constant bombardment of indoctrination and manipulation cult methods.

The MKO violates the article 19 which avers the freedom of expression.

Former MKO members say that punishment is frequently meted out for such offenses as expressing or fomenting disagreement with the political or military strategy of the MeK or sharing individual political views with other members.[16]

All mentioned above are just instances of harsh human rights abuses taking place within the affairs of the Mujahedin Khalq Cult. This is why the people being trapped within the double prison of MKO camp risk everything to run away. In one case for example, Zahra Bagheri crawled combat-style over a kilometer for hours in the dark to escape Camp Ashraf. Her body was so lacerated and bleeding that the Iraqi soldiers who found her were shocked and shed tears by seeing her deplorable condition.[17]

The defectors testimonies point to deteriorating Human Rights conditions in Camp Liberty. Still the Camp residents have no voice. Nobody takes care about their fates and their sufferings. The MKO Cult leaders on their turn have been “actively obstructive, indeed provocative, toward those wishing to investigate and alleviate this suffering” as Ann Singleton put it correctly. [18]

By: A.Sepinoud

References:

[1] Nejat bloggers are either former MKO members or have a family member who is currently held in Camp Ashraf. They have suffered deeply because of Massoud Rajavi’s crimes. While the Nejat Bloggers recognize that citing sources of information is essential ,we, as a society feel so strongly against the MKO that we have agreed to not include the group’s websites or links in our articles because we consider it as kind of publicity for the cult.

[2] Universal Declaration of Human Rights ,Wikipedia

[3] The Universal Declaration of Human Rights,UN.org,

[4] Charbonneau, Louis, Iran dissidents in Iraq, accused of rights abuses, slam UN envoy, Reuters News, July16,2013 

[5] The Universal Declaration of Human Rights,UN.org,

[6]Human Rights Watch, NO Exit, May2005

[7]ibid

 [8] Goulka, Jeremiah, Hansell, Lydia, Wilke, Elizabeth, Larson, Judith, The Mujahedin-e Khalq in Iraq, A Policy Conundrum, RAND, August2009

[9]ibid

[10] WikiLeaks Releases involving Mujahaddin e-Khalq (MEK)  , National Iranian American Council (NIAC),September 9,2011

[11] Bobb, Donn, UNHCR welcomes Albanian offer to Hurriya residents, unmultimedia.org, March 2013

[12] SCHRECK, ADAM, AP Interview: UN Iraq rep Martin Kobler urges exile cooperation, Associated Press, June 27, 2013

[13] NIAC, MEK leader in Paris obstructing the process to resettle members, October 4, 2013

[14] Charbonneau, Louis, Iran dissidents in Iraq, accused of rights abuses, slam UN envoy, Reuters News, July16,2013 

[15] Goulka, Jeremiah, Hansell, Lydia, Wilke, Elizabeth, Larson, Judith, The Mujahedin-e Khalq in Iraq, A Policy Conundrum, RAND, August2009

[16] ibid

[17]Singleton,Ann, Silencing the victims of the MeK to promote Maryam Rajavi’s phoney feminism,March7,2013

[18] Singleton, Anne & Khodabandeh ,Massoud, The Life of Camp Ashraf – Mojahedin-e Khalq, Victims of Many Masters, September 2011

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Human Rights Abuse in the MEK

It’s Time to Close the Camps

The last quarter century has been a time of great change across the globe, much of which has been for the better. The number of electoral democracies has grown from 69 in 1989 to 118 today. Despite

Michael RubinRussia’s resurgence, the instability wrought by the Arab Spring, and the dangers posed by rogue regimes, the world remains far freer now than at any point in history.

How tragic it is, then, that so many tens of thousands remain effectively imprisoned in political concentration camps. North Korea, of course, is the world’s worst violator. According to the Guardian, the left’s flagship paper, up to 200,000 North Koreans remain imprisoned. CNN has detailed some of the ongoing horror in the six camps, and any report from the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea is worth reading. The Hermit Kingdom is not alone, though.

For decades, China has also maintained a series of “re-education through labor” [laojiao] camps. And while the Chinese government has recently promised to dismantle its network, actions ultimately speak louder than words.

The United States might have little leverage over China and North Korea, but low-hanging fruit which could be resolved with American diplomatic pressure does exist. The Mujahedin al-Khalq (MKO) is correct to castigate those who believe that the Iranian government or its militia proxies should enjoy an open season on group members. Opposing massacres is not synonymous with support for the group, however; it may no longer be a U.S.-designated terror group, but remains just as much an authoritarian cult. And while MKO spokesmen may castigate the Iraqi government and the Iranian regime, the real victims of the MKO lay within the group itself. Camp Liberty—the successor to Camp Ashraf—exists as much if not more to keep MKO members insulated from the real world and under the control of MKO leader Maryam Rajavi’s commissars than as a means of protection for group members.

Other camps exist in the Tindouf province of southwestern Algeria. Here, perhaps 40,000 residents of southern Morocco, Algeria, western Mali, and northern Mauritania languish in camps controlled by the once-Marxist Polisario Front, largely kept from returning home by the group’s political commissars and the Algerian government. During a recent visit to Dakhla, in Western Sahara, I had the opportunity to speak to former members who described not only their own escape from the camps, but the attempts by others who were forcibly returned to the camps, where Polisario authorities punished them for the audacity of seeking to return home rather than languish in camps 22 years after the war between Morocco and Algeria ended. Simply put, Polisario realizes that if the camps close, the gravy train of international assistance would end and the Polisario would lose its raison d’être.

The Polisario is not the only Cold War remnant stubbornly holding hostages. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia also engages in the practice, holding some prisoners for more than a decade. While some journalists parachute in and whitewash just what happens in FARC camps, it is hard to see “cultural programming” as anything other than an attempt at ideological re-education.

The Obama administration came into office seemingly committed to prioritizing human rights, never mind the debates about how best to guarantee rights, freedom, and liberty. The State Department became a revolving door not only for journalists, but for human-rights advocates, most notably Human Rights Watch’s Tom Malinowski and writer Samantha Power. Increasingly, however, it seems such figures are either window dressing for an administration so disinterested in human rights that it is willing to sanction political concentration and re-education camps or, worse yet, that these figures are so permeated by moral equivalency and skewed in their understanding of what universal human rights are that they are willing to normalize with the regimes, sponsors, and groups which engage in such practices.

Concentration camps and slavery (discussed in a previous post) are two phenomena that simply should not exist in the 21st century. That they do is a sad testament to the reality of regimes like North Korea’s, China’s, Algeria’s, Venezuela’s, and Cuba’s, and the choices which successive U.S. administrations–both Democrat and Republican–have made to not let such issues be stumbling blocks to engaging with the United States on other issues.

Michael Rubin, Commentary Magazine

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The cult of Rajavi

Where are the 42 missing Mojahedin Khalq eye witnesses from Camp Ashraf?

Forty two eye witnesses to the attack on Camp Ashraf on September 1st 2013 have mysteriously disappeared after they were transferred to Camp Liberty on September 11th. Officials from the Where are the 42 missing Mojahedin Khalq eye witnesses from Camp Ashraf?Government of Iraq (GOI), which has been tasked by the United Nations to investigate the attack in which fifty three people died, have been unable to contact the survivors since they were relocated under UNAMI supervision, and Camp Ashraf was finally closed.

At the time the attack took place, the Mojahedin Khalq had maintained a symbolic force of around one hundred loyalists at Camp Ashraf, ostensibly to sell off MEK assets although this never happened. Fifty three residents were killed in brutal execution style during the attack by unknown assailants, but afterwards MEK leaders refused to fully cooperate with teams of concerned visitors and investigators from the UN, the US embassy and the GOI.

Deputy Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General (DSRSG), Mr Gyorgy Busztin visited the camp on September 3rd and tasked the Iraqi government to “ensure that a thorough, impartial and transparent investigation into this atrocious crime is conducted without delay and that the results of the investigation are made public”. After extensive searches inside Camp Ashraf and widespread enquiries in the immediate vicinity and beyond, Iraqi investigators are still unable to say who perpetrated the attack, nor what actually took place inside the camp. It did not help that the MEK have refused to hand over many films and photographs which they took themselves just before, during and in the aftermath of the attack. It soon became clear however that the MEK had interfered with the scene by moving several bodies to create visual scenarios for propaganda purposes and had also destroyed key evidence before investigators were able to get inside the camp.

Speaking on the day Camp Ashraf was finally evacuated and closed, one Iraqi official claimed that videos of the clashes at the camp released by the MEK reveal that “most of the dead were actually killed by their own fellows at the camp.” However, the forty two individuals who were in the camp during the attack have not subsequently been produced to help with enquiries. The official again complained about the refusal of MEK commanders to cooperate with the investigators.

The MEK claimed that seven of its named members went missing from Camp Ashraf after the attack and, in what experts on MEK behaviour regard as a diversionary tactic, alleged, “they were taken hostage by Iraqi forces and flown to Amara province to be extradited to Iran”. Both the GOI and the Iranian government have denied any involvement in the attack and say they have no knowledge as to the whereabouts of the seven named persons who were Massoud Rajavi’s closest cohort inside Iraq. Rajavi himself has been in hiding for ten years and is therefore unavailable for comment.

Rajavi and his wife, Maryam, ordered their followers to go on a hunger strike – which has now incredibly passed one hundred days – to demand the return of the seven, who, like Rajavi himself, have apparently disappeared without trace. Because it is not known where the seven are being held nor by whom, or indeed whether they are still alive, the hunger strike is awkwardly open ended as it addresses no party known to be able to ‘hand them over’. Commentators have pointed out anyway that the logic behind the hunger strikers’ demand does not tally with the accusation that those who brutally murdered fifty three people are now holding the missing seven. Wouldn’t such people actually be glad if more MEK members starve to death?

Western media sympathetic to the MEK’s role in Iraq have recently reported that unknown ‘independent UN experts’ want the GOI to speed up its investigation into this specific issue. According to Reuters, the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances said in a statement, “We call upon the Government of Iraq to speed up the investigations in order to disclose the fate and whereabouts of the [seven] individuals.”

The working group added that “the impunity with which these crimes have been committed is particularly flagrant given the severity of the offences and the alleged evidence of engagement by Iraqi forces in the commission of these crimes.”

A UN Special Rapporteur – this time on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions – Christof Heyns, said “international law clearly requires governments to ensure that all allegations of killings are investigated in a prompt, effective and impartial manner, irrespective of who the perpetrator is.”

But while Rajavi used these media reports to justify continuing the hunger strike, Iraqi investigators have stressed that even though this statement empowers Iraq to interview the forty two individual eye witnesses to the events at Camp Ashraf, until now the UN has failed to produce them and has instead allowed them to be swallowed up by the Rajavi cult’s camp commanders at Camp Liberty, to which neither the UN nor the GOI has access. This is in spite of the fact that these are key witnesses and without their testimony the investigation cannot be completed.

MEK experts working with the GOI on this issue, have warned United Nations human rights officials responsible for the camp of their grave concerns for the wellbeing of the forty two as well as the hunger strikers in Camp Liberty. News leaked from inside the camp by dissident members still held there, indicates that the forty two are being held incommunicado and that nobody has seen or heard of them since their arrival there. It is evident that the forty two hold vital information which the MEK leaders do not want to be made public.  There can be no doubt they are under severe pressure to conceal the truth about what happened at Camp Ashraf. The concern is that, if they do not succumb to this pressure they may be killed. The United Nations Special Rapporteur should demand immediate and unmediated access to these missing persons to ascertain their wellbeing. As it is also alleged that the MEK commanders are deliberately withholding food from the hunger strikers in Camp Liberty, and this abuse should also be investigated as a matter of urgency.

The GOI has said on several occasions it would like to be more assertive in finding ways to get inside the camp and have free and unfettered access to all the individuals residing there, and to be able to separate those who would like to leave voluntarily. They are, however, severely hampered by obedience to UNAMI and what Iraqi MP, Rafe’ Abdul Jabbar, described as “the glacial pace in the relocation process of the MEK members to third countries. He said, “Baghdad is obeying the UN in this regard and this organization is obeying the US. We should admit that Iraq’s independence is still far away”.

Iranian.com

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Iran

Tehran Has Documents to Prove US Beligerent Moves

Tehran Has Documents to Prove US Beligerent Moves including the use of Terrorism

Washington is not inclined towards rapprochement with Tehran as hostility towards Iran is in the nature of the US and Tehran has sufficient evidence and documents to prove this, a legislator said.

“The US has taken extensive measures against our country, including waging military aggression in Tabas (on April 24, 1980, the Operation Eagle Claw was a United States military operation to free its embassy staff from Iran that failed due to a ferocious sandstorm that overturned US warfare and killed many including former Iranian regime officers who accompanied the US forces), plotting and organizing the Nojeh coup (a plan to overthrow the newly-established Islamic Republic of Iran in 1980), all-out confrontation against Iran during the imposed war (Iraqi-imposed war against Iran 1980-1988), financial and intelligence assistance to Iran’s enemies, supporting (the anti-Iran terrorist) Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO, also known as MEK, NCRI or PMOI) as well as the seditionists in the post-presidential election unrests 2009, imposing continued sanctions against different Iranian sectors, introducing Iran as the supporter of terrorism in the region and …,” member of the parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Mohammad Hassan Asafari said on Monday.

“The Americans level accusations against us without any proof and evidence, but we have document to substantiate 70 cases of their hostile measures against Iran,” he added.

In relevant remarks in November, Secretary of Iran’s Human Rights Council Mohammad Javad Larijani lambasted the US for leading the global front against Iran, and said Washington’s hostilities towards Tehran have a long record.

“Today, the US is holding the flag of a front which has the silliest animosity towards Iran and our people’s hostility towards the US is not limited to the last 30 years and has a long record back in the history,” Larijani said at the time.

He described the US-led sanctions against Iran as cruel, and said the embargos are a clear violation of human rights and have grown so tough that the western states don’t allow our university students to study in other countries.

Western countries, led by the US, accuse Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons under the cover of a civilian nuclear program, while they have never presented any corroborative evidence to substantiate their allegations. Iran denies the charges and insists that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only.

Tehran stresses that the country has always pursued a civilian path to provide power to the growing number of Iranian population, whose fossil fuel would eventually run dry.

Despite the rules enshrined in the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) entitling every member state, including Iran, to the right of uranium enrichment, Tehran is now under four rounds of UN Security Council sanctions and the western embargos for turning down West’s calls to give up its right of uranium enrichment.

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Human Rights Abuse in the MEK

Psychological pressure and violation of human rights in Rajavi’s cult

We have informed our readers in previous articles that discontent amongst the members of Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK or MKO), stationed in Camp Liberty near Baghdad in Iraq, is escalating and Why do the international organizations close their eyes?more and more individuals seek to leave Rajavi’s cult. The situation is so tense that the commanders of the cult have openly declared a state of alert. The main task of the officials of the cult is to identify discontented members, place them under scrutiny and to employ their inhumane psychological techniques against them. The commanders have been warned that if any of the members under their command escapes, they will be severely punished.

In order to bring the members under tighter control and make them forget about escaping, the officials of the cult have increased the peer pressure in the sessions named “current operation” and, as they say, have heated them up. In these sessions the person who is the subject is put under severe harassment by others using insults and accusations. This is done to break down the subject mentally. The situation is so hard that after the session they closely watch the subject so they do not commit suicide.

In these sessions for instance they tell the subject that he or she has become a vampire sucking the blood of the organization. This is related to an address by the cult leader Massoud Rajavi to his followers in which he warned them against sucking the blood of the organization. Rajavi, like all cult leaders, instead of being responsible toward his followers for leading the organization into catastrophe is claiming that they are sucking the blood out of his cult.

Other examples are calling the subject ‘empty minded’ or a ‘stinky inhumane body’. They make the subject confess that all these years they were busy sucking the blood of the organization and have betrayed the leader. They make the subject feel ashamed of being alive.

In these sessions they ultimately, after shattering the subject mentally, accuse the person of still having ties with their family in their heart and that they must cut out these reactionary ties. What the person must do practically is to confess this and then publicly denounce all his or her loved ones.

One interesting issue is that the cult keeps calling the officials of the UN and the ICRC spies and elements of the enemy, and has announced that approaching them is passing a red line. Approaching these people or asking for them and even talking about them is equivalent to betraying the organization and the consequence is to become the subject of these devastating daily sessions. In each meeting Rajavi and other leaders of the cult talk against the UN and the ICRC in relation to Camp Liberty and call them the agents of Iran and Iraq. All the cult officials think about is how to prevent the members from escaping.

The way the cult treats its followers in the big prison called Camp Liberty under the absolute rule of Massoud Rajavi is an obvious violation of human rights. The treatment and conditions of the captives in the camp is most certainly inhumane. The international organizations are fully aware of these things but for some political interests close their eyes and remain silent. Such behavior is not acceptable under any standard but unfortunately the victims of Rajavi have no voice.

We have repeatedly announced that the lives and psychological health of Rajavi’s captives are in danger, and that the international officials who deliberately do not fulfill their duties and have given Rajavi an open hand, and do not ever openly say what they see with their own eyes, are responsible.

Sahar Family Foundation once again repeats previous warnings that appeasing Massoud Rajavi, the cult leader of MKO, is against the interests of his captives in Camp Liberty and makes him even more impudent and will have no benefit for anyone.

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The cult of Rajavi

MKO: Don’t criticize us or you are IRI’s agent!

The Mujahedin khalq Organization (the MKO) is a destructive cult by any criteria. It is a cult because of MKO: Don't criticize us or you are IRI's agent!many reasons. One of the most significant reasons is that it cannot handle criticism. However, criticism is regularly applied inside the cult –to keep members brainwashed — but not against the cult leaders. In fact, self-criticism and confession are part of the methodology of the destructive cults including the MKO.

Members of the group are tasked with reporting all their 24/7 thoughts, emotions and dreams to their senior officials, they have to criticize themselves or their peers for any natural thought that might –according to the cult regulations – distract them from the aim of the group but they are never allowed to criticize or question their superior ones. Criticizing the leaders of the group makes you the most disgusting creature in the cult that deserves the most horrific punishments.

Javad Firouzmand, a former member of the MKO revealed parts of suppressive conduct by the group senior officials against members in the MKO camps who were willing to leave the group or had declared their defection from the group. He described the way Mehdi Abrishamchi –the so-called chairman of the Peace Commission of the National Council of Resistance— treated the 400 cult members who were not willing to stay in the group any more. The entire 400 dissident members were accused of being”the spies of the regime”, as Mr. Firouzmand reminds.”He [Abrishamchi] definitely remembers the time he handed a number of defectors and dissidents of the group to Saddam Hussein forces. They were then imprisoned in AbuQuraib where they would be tortured and die and no one would know about their fate,”Firouzmand wrote. [1]

He also notes the MKO’s dreadful ability to fabricate documents against critic members. He recalls the night when Abrishamchi came to his cell in Ashraf prison and asked him to sign a paper or he would be put to death. The document was supposed to prove that he had been arrested by the MKO forces in front of Iranian embassy in Baghdad a few hours after he had escaped the camp. As Firouzmand states he had never gone to Iranian embassy but actually he had been arrested by Iraqi security forces in the house of an Iraqi merchant! He was threatened to death when he didn’t accept to sign the paper. Later he was forced to sign some documents just in order to survive!

The waves of dissent among MKO supporters outside the camps and rank and file inside the camps who are constantly offended  by the mind controlling, oppressive and cult-like system of the group, flooded by the group’s propaganda, deprived from their most basic human rights, have amplified the bankruptcy of the group. Indeed, in recent years the group has struggled hard to survive rather than struggling to allegedly overthrow the Islamic Republic.

Ann Singleton is another former member of the group, Middle East Strategy Consultants, Author of “Saddam’s Private Army” and “The life of Camp Ashraf”. She notifies the MKO’s undemocratic weird attitude toward any criticism. As Mrs. Singleton puts those who recently distanced themselves from the group by tenderly criticizing some of the leaders’ functions”have been stunned by the vitriolic attacks the MEK launched against them”. [2]

“The Rajavis of course claim that anyone who speaks out against them, particularly the former members, has been recruited by the IRI and sent to destroy the MEK as part of a malicious, murderous plan.”Singleton writes.”Yet where is the evidence of this?”, she asks.[3]

The cult-like substance of the MKO undermines any efforts by the group to get the gesture of a democratic alternative to Iranian government. Jeremia Goulka who is one of the co- authors of the RAND report on the MKO, suggests that the MEK vigorously denies that it is a cult, accusing critics of working for the Iranian regime or performing inadequate research. “However, I studied the MEK in depth and over a period of many months for the U.S. military,”he writes. He describes his experience of visiting Camp Ashraf:

“I visited Camp Ashraf, the MEK facility 40 miles north of Baghdad, and interviewed MEK members, former MEK members, and dozens of military and civilian officials.  Along with almost all of my interviewees and Human Rights Watch, I concluded that the MEK is a cult.  It employs many common cult practices: mandated celibacy and divorce, thought control, sleep deprivation, and forced labor.  It segregates men from women, separates families and friends – who must seek permission just to converse – and even tells family members back home that the members are dead.”[4]

“While its propaganda arm espouses Western values to Western audiences, the MEK continues to force-feed its doctrine to members who may not criticize the Rajavis and are not free to leave the Ashraf compound,”he notes. [5] Referring to Maryam Rajavi’s propaganda against the Iranian nuclear program, Goulka warns Western supporters of the group about the risk of advocating a group that he absolutely sees a cult.

 

By Mazda Parsi

References:

[1] https://www.nejatngo.org/fa/posts/15172

[2] https://www.nejatngo.org/en/posts/5513

[3] ibid

[4] Goulka, Jeremiah, INVESTIGATIONS BEGIN INTO MEK SUPPORTERS UP, Salon.com, March 28, 2012

[5] Goulka, Jeremiah, THE IRAN WAR HAWKS’ FAVORITE CULT GROUP, Salon.com, March 28, 2012

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Maryam Rajavi

Maryam Rajavi holds her followers in contempt – where is her compassion?

Those MEK supporters living in western countries who have recently distanced themselves from the organisation and publicly questioned the MEK’s activities, (most of whom would deny that they have Maryam Rajavi holds her followers in contempt – where is her compassion?separated completely), have been stunned by the vitriolic attacks the MEK launched against them. They truly believed while they were close to the MEK that these kinds of attack were justifiably targeting real agents of Iran. Now they have also come under attack themselves and it is slowly dawning on them that such accusations are not only unfounded but are meant deliberately to instill fear and provoke self-justification as a way to distract and silence such criticism. They will no doubt find the courage to challenge this behaviour and continue to seek the truth.

The Rajavis of course claim that anyone who speaks out against them, particularly the former members, has been recruited by the IRI and sent to destroy the MEK as part of a malicious, murderous plan. Yet where is the evidence of this?

The MEK’s critics have pointed out many times that the people who are hurting the MEK most are the cult’s leaders. It is they who order self-immolations, who withhold medical treatment, who place them in the line of danger of attack and, most recently, starve them by denying them food and calling this a hunger strike.

The critics demand help and rescue for the people still enthralled by these leaders and held captive by isolation and cultic manipulation, not only in Camp Liberty but in western bases also.

So, if the critics are acting out of humanitarian concern, the Rajavis must surely be aware of the mixed message this sends. Here’s the problem: if the Iranian regime is the evil, terrorist sponsoring entity which Rajavi has built her whole narrative on, what are we to make of the message of these so-called agents who display nothing but compassion for the people still trapped inside the MEK, at every level.

None are calling for the deaths of the members. Quite the opposite, we all wish to help them, to give them back their humanity, their dignity and their integrity which Maryam Rajavi has stolen or destroyed. Critics of the MEK leaders, Massoud and Maryam Rajavi, have campaigned for ten years and more to expose the appalling cruelty and corruption of their little dictatorship. For years they have endured the insults, beatings and attempts at character assassination flung at them at the instigation of these two wicked people.

Anyone involved in dealing with the MEK in any place and over any issue, who has met with the former members has expressed surprise at the simple, straightforward concern they have for their former colleagues and their families. There simply isn’t a hidden agenda.

The MEK demonise the Iranian government as evil and wicked. So, using the same MEK logic, outsiders need to ask the Rajavis where did all this compassion come from? Why is the Iranian intelligence ministry acting in such a charitable way? Have they become social workers!?

Think! Who, in the past ten years, has done more to harm the members than Massoud and Maryam Rajavi. The cruelty and corruption which govern the group’s internal relations are known intimately by those who suffered under that regime. Where is Maryam Rajavi’s compassion? Why does she show no sympathy or kindness toward her own people, yet lash out against those who do?

Rajavi says the demand of her forced hunger strike is the return of seven allegedly missing people. But she has still not produced any evidence to demonstrate whether they are alive or dead, or where they are or why there has never been any sign of them anywhere. The people who could give clues to solve this mystery are out of reach of UN and GOI investigators. These are the 42 survivors of the September 1st attack on Camp Ashraf in which 53 people were brutally killed by unknown assailants. These 42 were transferred to Camp Liberty where they are being held incommunicado by the MEK leadership cadre. Why? They certainly have information about what took place in the camp on that day.

Until the facts become known, the hunger strike is meaningless and causing unnecessary suffering for the participants. If there is no end-game how long do they go on? We are witness only to another graphic example of the cruelty and callous indifference of the Rajavis toward other human beings.

Anne Khodabandeh (Singleton), Middle East Strategy Consultants,Author of “Saddam’s Private Army” and “The life of Camp Ashraf”

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Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Notes on the Mujahadeen-e-Khalq and Americans in Paris

On Saturday, 7 December 2013, in an auditorium at the Bourse in Paris, France, Maryam Rajavi and the Mujahadeen-e-Khalq (MEK) held a meeting with several notable supporters including former New York

Photo by CSD of Rudolph Giuliani and Maryam Rajavi

Mayor and Republican Presidential Candidate Rudy Giuliani, former Vermont Governor and Democratic Presidential Candidate Howard Dean, former attorney general in the George W. Bush administration Michael Mucasey, and South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s daughter Naomi Nontombi Tutu. Over the years, despite it cult-like practices and even when it was formally labeled a terrorist organization, the organization managed to acquire quite a list of high-profile ex-dignitaries in the United States.

I went to cover the event because I think the group may wind up playing a role of one sort and another helping to undermine American and European efforts to reach an agreement with Iran to forestall and foreclose its nuclear weapons capability.

There are several ways the MEK might do this.

It was listed by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist organization until last year for reasons outlined in this Council on Foreign Relations Backgrounder. Despite official denials, it may yet try to use violence inside Iran to undermine the talks, knowing full well that any terrorist incidents will serve the hardliners in the regime and “exacerbate the contradictions,” as leftist revolutionaries used to say. When Iranian scientists have been killed, suspicion often has fallen on the MEK, the Israelis, or both.

The MEK claims to have extensive intelligence resources on the ground in Iran and claims credit for the important revelation in 2002 of the regime’s secret nuclear program, although there has been extensive speculation that the actual intelligence was supplied to the MEK by the Israelis. Its ability to float information — or disinformation — about the regime’s activities could complicate debate inside the United States.

To the extent the MEK claims credit for adding to the pressure on the Iranian government to negotiate it strengthens the hand of those inside Iran who want to discredit the negotiators.

But its greatest disruptive ability at the moment may well be connected to the way the Iranian-backed government of Iraq has treated MEK members in various camps there. On September 1 this year, 52 of them were killed, allegedly by special forces from the Iraqi Ministry of Interior, and seven (six of them women) are alleged to have been taken hostage.

Why the Iraqi government would do this, even with prodding from the Iranians, is something of a mystery. One obvious possibility would be revenge: the MEK sided with the mullahs to overthrow the shah, then attempted, and failed, to take over the revolution; it subsequently blew up scores of top Iranian religious leaders, and after Saddam Hussein invaded Iran it sided with his forces. More than 20 years later, when the United States led the invasion of Iraq to overthrow Saddam, the MEK still supported him. But U.S. forces decided its members might be used in some way as a card in future negotiations with Iran and the more than 3,000 MEK members in Iraq were put in a camp, disarmed, and began an existence in legal, political and diplomatic limbo. As the United States withdrew from Iraq in 2011, fears mounted that the government of Prime Minister Maliki would simply ship the Iranian MEK members across the border to face the tender mercies of the government in Tehran.

That did not happen. Instead their camp at Ashraf was closed after a violent incursion by Iraqi forces and they were sent to Camp Liberty on the outskirts of Baghdad (although they are still referred to by the MEK as “Ashrafis,” which is why in my tweets there were some references to killings at Camp Ashraf that were in fact at Camp Liberty).

The United States and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees assured the Ashrafis that they would be resettled in other countries, but that process has been very slow and one of the few countries willing to accept them even temporarily for medical care has been Albania. The camp came under repeated mortar attacks, and then came the September 1 killings and abductions.

Giuliani, Dean and others who worked to get the MEK “delisted” from the State Department’s catalogue of foreign terrorist organizations were involved to some extent in the assurances given the MEK that they would be protected at Camp Liberty and relocated in a timely fashion.

Giuliani argued yesterday that the issue of the Ashrafis and the nuclear negotiations should be linked, something the Obama administration is very unlikely to do. Dean claimed that failure to protect the Ashrafis dishonored the United States of America.

Following are my live tweets from the meeting:

http://christopherdickey.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/the-mujahadeen-e-khalq-mek-and.html?spref=fb

Award-winning author Christopher Dickey is the Paris Bureau Chief  and Middle East Regional Editor for The Daily Beast. Chris’s nonfiction books include “Securing the City,” a New York Times Book Review notable book in 2009; “Summer of  Deliverance,” his memoir about his father, poet and novelist James  Dickey; “Expats,” about Westerners in the modern Arab and Muslim world;  and “With the Contras,” a first-hand account of combat in Central  American wars. He is also the author of two acclaimed thrillers:  “Innocent Blood” and “The Sleeper.” Before moving to Newsweek, Chris worked for The Washington Post as Cairo Bureau Chief and Mexico City  Bureau Chief. Chris’s columns about counter-terrorism, espionage and the Middle East appear on The Daily Beast. Links to most recent columns and articles are posted on The Shadowland Journal, and also on the archive at ChristopherDickey.com.

Christopher Dickey, The Shadowland Journal

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European Union

Victims’ Families Protest against MKO Leader’s Presence in Eu Parliament

(Note: This report has been mistakenly attributed to Habilian, it is in fact from Edalat Society)

Habilian Association – an NGO formed of the families of 17,000 victims of terrorism in Iran – in a letter to the European Parliament, protested against the presence of the terrorist Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO, also known as MEK, NCRI or PMOI) leader Maryam Rajavi in a session of the EP committee sessions.

“Maryam Rajavi is a terrorist and there is no place for terrorists in the parliament,” the letter said, and added, “Some EP members who have close cooperation with MKO should rather spend their energy on transferring Camp Liberty residents to a third country and in this way prevent the MKO leaders from victimizing these people.”

The letter reminded the European Parliament that the MKO has killed thousands of Iranian and Iraqi citizens as well as seven Americans.

Many of the MKO members have abandoned the terrorist organization while most of those still remaining in the group are said to be willing to quit but are under pressure and torture not to do so.

A recent Human Rights Watch report accused the MKO of running prison camps in Iraq and committing human rights violations.

According to the Human Rights Watch report, the outlawed group puts defectors under torture and jail terms.

The group, founded in the 1960s, blended elements of Islamism and Stalinism and participated in the overthrow of the US-backed Shah of Iran in 1979. Ahead of the revolution, the MKO conducted attacks and assassinations against both Iranian and Western targets.

The group started assassination of the citizens and officials after the revolution in a bid to take control of the newly-established Islamic Republic. It killed several of Iran’s new leaders in the early years after the revolution, including the then President, Mohammad Ali Rajayee, Prime Minister, Mohammad Javad Bahonar and the Judiciary Chief, Mohammad Hossein Beheshti who were killed in bomb attacks by MKO members in 1981.

The group fled to Iraq in 1986, where it was protected by Saddam Hussein and where it helped the Iraqi dictator suppress Shiite and Kurd uprisings in the country.

The terrorist group joined Saddam’s army during the Iraqi imposed war on Iran (1980-1988) and helped Saddam and killed thousands of Iranian civilians and soldiers during the US-backed Iraqi imposed war on Iran.

Since the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, the group, which now adheres to a pro-free-market philosophy, has been strongly backed by neo-conservatives in the United States, who eventually took the MKO off the US terror list.

The US formally removed the MKO from its list of terror organizations in early September 2012, one week after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sent the US Congress a classified communication about the move. The decision made by Clinton enabled the group to have its assets under US jurisdiction unfrozen and do business with American entities, the State Department said in a statement at the time.

In September 2012, the last groups of the MKO terrorists left Camp Ashraf, their main training center in Iraq’s Diyala province. They have been transferred to Camp Liberty which lies Northeast of the Baghdad International Airport.

Camp Liberty is a transient settlement facility and a last station for the MKO in Iraq.

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European Union

MEPs must intervene to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe in MKO

Honorable Members of European Parliament

Kanone Iran Ghalam (KIG) a humanitarian organization established in Germany for more than a decade by defected members of the Iranian Mojahedin-E-Khalgh Organization (MEK), some of them with more than a quarter of century of history inside the MEK.

KIG has been disclosing the atrocities of the MEK against their own members inside the Cult like organization and elsewhere.

In this respect, KIG would like to bring the followings to your kind attention:

-Whilst the transfer of the imprisoned members of MEK in Camp Liberty in Iraq to a third country has been stopped by the Masoud and Maryam Radjavi the leaders of the MEK.

-While the MEK members in Camp Liberty see no future for themselves in the MEK organization.

-Whilst, according to the United Nations officials, the leaders of the MEK have created a dead lock for the release of their members in Camp Liberty by creating many problems in the process of their release.

-while, the captive members in Camp Liberty have been ordered to go on hunger strike, depriving them from their basic rights of eating and drinking are suffering physically and psychologically.

-Whilst the ordered hunger strike is in its 90th days with absolutely no prospect what so ever.

-Whilst the main goal of the MEK Leaders is to eliminate the dissident members inside the organization by this action, are also after utilizing the hunger strike and the deaths resulting from it for more media coverage purposes.

KIG would like to ask your honorable members of EU Parliament to take action to put an end to this humanitarian tragedy in Camp Liberty Iraq.

Now days will be marking the last days of some innocent people in Camp Liberty, your action will be of a great value in saving innocent lives.

Undoubtedly, MEK Leaders stationed in Paris have the full responsibility of this gradual death which is clearly a crime against humanity.

Kanon-e Iran Galam

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