Membership in the MEK as a cult

Rajavi abused women in the cult: Ex – member

In an interview on December 5, 2012, Zahra Mir Bagheri, former member of MKO’s leadership council, spoke of the tragic fate of women who were murdered in the terrorist Mujahedin e-Khalq organization.

She clearly named people who were involved in those murders and asked the international Human Rights communities to act against these tragic inner-cultish murders.

Revealing the misogynistic nature of Rajavi’s cult, she emphasized she had witnessed killing of women in the leadership council and blamed Massoud and Maryam Rajavi for the secret murders in the cult.

She said Rajavis had issued a death sentence on those women who had decided to escape the cult and after they were detained by Saddam’s security forces, the issued verdicts were executed in any possible ways. She named a number of victims and testified she had witnessed their killing.

Mir Bagheri had revealed the sexual assault on women in the cult before:

“We were called to Massoud by different excuses and we faced celebrations every time. There were no ideological discussions. It was all about Massoud, the ideological leader, and unique relations with him. We were given various gifts such as shower towels, underwear, perfumes and other things which we wouldn’t understand why they were given to us.

We were encouraged by higher ranking members in the council who had gone through all this before, to establish unique emotional connections to Massoud and speak with him romantically. It was always hard for us because we considered all this as an ideological connection.

We thought we couldn’t yet understand it. We thought we had to learn from higher ranking members who had completed these levels before us and that was how our brains were washed deeper. For instance, except those presents, some golden bracelets were also given to us. It was first a bracelet with a picture of Maryam on it. When we were receiving these gifts, Massoud used to touch our hands and that was the beginning. He sometimes joked about it or he would say “just like my own [wife].”

We wouldn’t understand what he was meaning by saying “just like my own” and we used to repeat it. If we had just paid a little more attention we would understand it. It was said before that Massoud and Maryam are not included in mandatory divorces. So we had to go through these levels just like Maryam.

The women in the second layer of leadership council were presented with another bracelet which had a picture of Massoud Rajavi on it. “

Zahra Mir Bagheri was forced to crawl 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 wept on seeing her injuries. She spent several weeks in hospital recovering from this ordeal. In addition she has had to undergo various operations in Germany.

April 18, 2013 0 comments

The cult of Rajavi

Memoirs of Nasrin Ebrahimi, MKO ex- member_Part 5

Nasrin Ebrahimi is a former member of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization, who fled the group in 2006. She was one of the first survivors of the Cult-like MKO who dared to reveal the corruption of the leaders of the group. She was the first person to speak of the “Summit Operation” which was a cult jargon through which a large number of female members of the group became infertile by Hysterectomy surgery.
Nim Negah Website is publishing series of interviews with Ms. Ebrahimi. Nejat society translated excerpts of her memoirs of the sufferings of living in the MKO cult.

Consequences of Emotional Suppression

After a few months, they held a meeting in women base where Maryam Rajavi discussed a very bizarre case. “When we separated you from men, we got rid of the main threat but now we are facing another serious threat,” she said. ”this time the problem is among women!” It was too difficult for me to understand what she meant as I had never come across such a case. “In the absence of men, women may want to satisfy themselves with one another,” Maryam continued.

“Women have no right to have friendly relationships. They mustn’t be kind to each other. They should criticize each other. They should destroy the relationships that have been created in the absence of men”, ordered Maryam Rajavi.

Well, the truth is that you cannot separate men and women otherwise you are fighting a Rule of Nature. When Rajavi omitted such a natural relationship, the negative effects appeared in both men and women […]

Considering such facts, the authorities frequently changed members’ responsibilities so that they could not be with certain comrades more than a few months […]

Special sessions were held for women. During the session, women had to read reports on their sexual relationships. Then they would verbally abuse each other in order to grow hatred between themselves.

You may not believe that in the female base, women were not allowed to wear open collar or short sleeve dresses. […]

If you take a look at women in Camp Ashraf, you would find that their faces were sad, bored, exhausted and often angry, violent and tough. Suppressed sexual desires caused hormonal problems that would in turn cause low-temper and depression.

The story of painful consequences of suppressing sexual desires in Camp Ashraf does not include one or two cases; it includes.

[…] There were men who escaped from their base after mid-night and would come around women bases so that they could find a woman alone outside the base.

There were numerous cases of the above mentioned stories. For instance, a young man was found around our guarding post. The women treated him like a murderer. He was terribly beaten by the women. I never found him guilty. In my opinion, he had done nothing wrong. I believed that it was Rajavi’s fault. With every cry of pain by the young man I cursed Massoud Rajavi for the crimes he committed against his own members. Those poor youth were deceived to join the horrible castle of Ashraf in the hope of living a better life in Europe!

April 11, 2013 0 comments

Former members of the MEK

Memoirs of Nasrin Ebrahimi, MKO ex- member_Part 4

Nasrin Ebrahimi is a former member of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization, who fled the group in 2006. She was one of the first survivors of the Cult-like MKO who dared to reveal the corruption of the leaders of the group. She was the first person to speak of the “Summit Operation” which was a cult jargon through which a large number of female members of the group became infertile by Hysterectomy surgery.
Nim Negah Website is publishing series of interviews with Ms. Ebrahimi. Nejat society translated excerpts of her memoirs of the sufferings of living in the MKO cult.

Women stuck behind Cult bars

I liked music very much. I wished to listen to a piece by one of our famous singers like Ebi, Siavash or Darius…but in Camp Ashraf there was no access to radio or TV…

To our surprise, today the MKO rudely propagates the problems of satellite broadcasting in Iran while in the MKO we were not allowed to listen to music, let alone having a radio.

How can the group run propaganda criticizing the satellite issues in Iran? Of course this is why the MKO is called “Hypocrites” by the Iranian people!

Once, I saw a women listening to a walkman in a room labeled “Luggage Room”. She had been brought to the camp from Europe. The room was hardly ever trafficked by members so it was a silent place.

Immediately after she saw me, she hid the walkman. I called to her and said,” I won’t tell it to anyone.”

Then I asked her to lend her walkman to me for a while. She begged me not to let anyone know that she had kept her walkman. As it was usual members’ properties were confiscated before they entered Ashraf but this woman could manage to keep her walkman.

There was a problem with the walkman; it could be heard by a person next to you so it was dangerous. There was the risk that officials would learn about it.

That night I decided to stay up and listen to music but I had to wait until everyone would fall asleep. I waited until 1 am. When I made sure that everyone was asleep, I started listening to music under the blanket …suddenly the person next to me asked, “Are you listening to music?” I was so terrified that I couldn’t answer her. I turned it off… I couldn’t sleep all night long. The next morning I tried to be nice with the person who had found out that I was listening to music. I tried to ask her to forget the case. If she criticized me in the brainwashing sessions, I would be left into a big trouble; I had to explain why I had granted the right of listening to music to myself!

The self-criticism meetings were actually trials where you had no attorney, no right to defend yourself. You had to hear your comrades verbally abuse you. During the trial, there was no justice; nothing was fair… That was why in Ashraf the word Meeting was the equivalent of Stress and Fear. That was why, with my eyes I begged that girl who had found me listening to music, asking her not to tell it to anyone! [..]

After the separation from men, it was the first time you could see all female members in one place. Before that we were divided in different bases as you could not find out who was who! Once all women were settled in one single base, you could realize there were a lot of mothers whose children were separated from them by Rajavi , there were a lot of young girls who were kept in the MKO by Rajavi for their whole life so they had no idea of the outside world.

I remember a young girl asking me what the buildings in Iran were built of. I said, “I can’t understand what you mean?!” She said,” I mean the buildings there, are like Ashraf made of Conex (Bengals) or they are built of something else?”This was really surprising! It recalled you of the Seven Sleepers!

After some time of living in female base, I found out that those mothers, whose children were taken by Rajavi, were so nice with us – we were almost at the age of their separated children.

I didn’t know that in the MKO love was forbidden and no one was allowed to be kind with others. After a while I realized that they pretended to ignore us before the eyes of MKO officials, they never talked with us in front of them. Thus I got to know that kindness and love was forbidden in the MKO. Loving mothers were humiliated by the Rajavis!

Some of the mothers gave us gifts, they liked to hug and kiss us just like their own children but this was forbidden in the cult of Rajavi. The cult authorities said, ”once you recall your children and love other sisters in the memory of your children, you betray Rajavi”(!)

March 18, 2013 0 comments

Maryam Rajavi

Ashamed of your Leader? Silencing the victims of MKO to promote Rajavi’s phoney feminism

International Women’s Day on 8 March is rooted in women’s demands for better working pay and conditions, and for voting rights, and has expanded to encompass women’s global struggle for equal rights and equal participation in social, political and economic processes.

In spite of considerable progress, continued vigilance and action are required to ensure that women’s equality is gained and maintained in all aspects of life all over the world.
In this context what are we to understand about Maryam Rajavi’s claim to feminist credentials?

Rather than take Maryam Rajavi’s words and image at face value, let us examine her actions and behaviour toward women in her own organisation. The best people to help in this respect are the women members of the Mojahedin. Understandably, current female MEK members cannot speak freely about their experience of being in this organisation because they must only iterate the MEK’s public stance.

However, those women who have recently left the MEK are certainly free to talk about the situation for women inside the MEK. Even so, their courage must be acknowledged. Not only is it difficult for women to break social taboos to talk about sexual abuse, but like whistleblowers everywhere, they are subjected to enormous pressure to keep quiet.

Indeed, just a glance at the difficulties faced by these women in recent months speaks volumes about the MEK’s real approach to women. Since making public statements in a conference held the Autumn of 2012 about sexual abuses committed by the MEK leaders, Massoud and Maryam Rajavi, against them and other women members, the following incidents have taken place against these women.

Batoul Soltani previously spoke out about the abuse of women in the MEK in both Baghdad and now in Europe where she lives. She was recently attacked in front of her house and her neighbours had to come to her rescue. The MEK have published indecipherable false documents on their websites alleging that while she was a member of the Mojahedin’s Leadership Council (the highest rank after the Rajavis), she was working for the Iranian Intelligence Ministry. Batoul joined the MEK with her husband and two month old baby when she was barely eighteen years old. She had been a member for over twenty years.

Nasrin Ebrahimi, who now lives in Switzerland, was fourteen years old when she was taken to the MEK’s Camp Ashraf in Iraq. She was only able to escape after the American army forced the MEK to disarm in 2003. Nasrin was invited to the European Parliament to testify about her experience as a woman in the Mojahedin. After that she suffered such severe harassment by the MEK that she changed country twice to escape them. Police have had to protect her for some time against the MEK. Recently she has again been approached and threatened in Switzerland for joining the group of women exposing the abuses.

Zahra Bagheri crawled combat-style over a kilometre for hours in the dark to escape Camp Ashraf. Her body was so lacerated and bleeding that the Iraqi soldiers who found her wept on seeing her injuries. She spent several weeks in hospital recovering from this ordeal. In addition she has had to undergo various operations in Germany because of neglect of her medical conditions while she was in Ashraf. She also joined the other women in the Autumn 2012 conference. The MEK are currently using her two sisters and her brother who remain in Camp Liberty to perform on their TV to swear at Zahra and their mother.

In the last two months, three more women have escaped from Camp Liberty. Seeing this treatment is it surprising that they are reluctant to talk to human rights investigators in Iraq even though privately they corroborate the experiences told by the women above.

They talk about Maryam Rajavi grooming young women and having them dance naked for her and Massoud. They say that after raping them Massoud gives them a medallion with his picture on it. There are 100 names, perhaps more, of women who have had hysterectomies; that is one in ten women in the MEK. They say this is done so that Rajavi can order them to sleep with him or any other man without fear of pregnancy.

It is public knowledge that the MEK instigated forced divorces long before the fall of Saddam so that for twenty years there have been no children in the MEK. In interviews with the BBC they proudly announced it and defended this policy. According to recent escapees, Rajavi has told the MEK the following: ‘According to Islamic rule, if a woman turns against her husband he has the right to kill her. According to the Internal Revolution you are all my wives. So if any of you betrays me and leaves the MEK I have the right to kill you under Islamic law.’ On the MEK websites they have published Massoud Rajavi’s threat: ‘I have evidence about everybody and if they leave I will expose them.’ It is thought he may have film of sexual acts.

(Women "rewarded" with pendants and robes after sexual ordeal)

The MEK have for decades used violence, intimidation and harassment to prevent former members from speaking publicly about the abuses taking place inside the organisation.

News of these activities is suppressed because some people think that terrorism is a useful tool. These women face a backlash of ‘power and money’ to stop them talking, while the same ‘power and money’ grooms the perpetrator, Maryam Rajavi, to talk about the rights of women and criticise marriage laws and say how they should be changed in the favour of women. ‘Power and money’ believe the MEK should not only be removed from terrorism lists but should be paraded in parliaments as exemplars of feminism. ‘Power and money’ are so dishonest that they cast the MEK in the role of victim while condemning the former women members as torturers, spies and agents.

No one expects ‘power and money’ to take the side of victims, but to turn the tables in this way is truly sickening.

Author of "Saddam’s Private Army" and "The life of Camp Ashraf"
http://www.camp-ashraf.com

March 7, 2013 0 comments

Former members of the MEK

Memoirs of Nasrin Ebrahimi, MKO ex- member_Part 3

Male and Female: a Separation

Rajavi’s major objective was to maintain members in Camp Ashraf by killing the hope for future life.

Male and Female: a Separation
Hysterectomy operation verified Rajavi as the most criminal and treasonous person in the history of Iran. In his opinion, the removal of women’s wombs would entirely turn them to Rajavi’s property for ever.

In order to suppress male members, Rajavi used female members over them. To show their superiority over men, women had no pity for others, they pretended to be rough. The more they imposed pressure on male members, the more they were praised by Massoud Rajavi. This was the sign of connection with Massoud. Hard labour didn’t let members think. Rajavi had deceived a bunch of womenwho were victims who in their turn victimized male members. You might have heard of Ms. Batoul Soltani’s revelations about sexual abuse by Massoud Rajavi. I was not a member of MKO’s Elite Council (Leadership Council) but when I got to know about Ms. Soltani’s memoirs, I realized the histories about “Leadership’s Bounds” and meetings with Maryam Rajavi in which she told us,” We are all Rajavi’s wives.”

According to Ashraf regulations, all women are in “Rajavi’s Bounds” so no one had the right to look at them or think about them.

We were given necklaces by Massoud that meant that we were connected to the leadership. As we were going ahead in meetings, new subjects would emerge. For example, after we got the necklaces, the subject “4 walls” [chardivari] was proposed; the meaning of the new subject was that we had an owner, named Massoud Rajavi. Maryam Rajavi typically told us:”You have the most handsome and the best husband in the world. How a married woman let herself think of another man?”However, at that time I supposed that her words were absolutely ideological arguments not anymore…

After compulsory divorces, the situation in Camp Ashraf was not like a normal community and the events that took place in Ashraf never take place in an ordinary community so it’s not easy for female defectors of the MKO to talk about it.

In my idea we shouldn’t be scared or ashamed to reveal what happened to us there, instead Massoud Rajavi should be ashamed because he caused all these problems for us.
Psychological researches indicate that the suppression of sexual and emotional desires doubtlessly hurts person’s mental health. First of all, I believe that we should view the issue scientifically not personally…

In 1996, men and women’s bases in Ashraf were made separated from each other. Separated bases were built for women inside Camp Ashraf. The separation was created to stop men and women to get involved with each other even in their minds. (This was called “Caught in a moment”).Rajavi feared such an issue so women were completely alienated from men. Just a small number of female officials stayed in male bases as their supervisors.

A number of women were not happy with the separation process. They weren’t impressed by Rajavis’ propaganda.”This is contrary to the values we have propagated for years,” they said.”If men and women cannot work together, so we made mistake to chant slogans about the equality between men and women”. […]

By the way, we were resettled in female base. In a meeting that was held immediately after the relocation, the officials told us:”Now that sisters are apart from brothers, there is the risk that you pamper yourself and leave your values." (!!) Therefore severe and harsh treating became more than the time we were resided together with male members…

To be continued

March 5, 2013 0 comments

MEK Camp Ashraf

Mass grave in Ashraf contains executed MKO members

Mass grave in Camp Ashraf contains executed Mojahedin Khalq leaders and cadres

After weeks of investigation at the now empty former camp of the terrorist Mojahedin Khalq

Izzat Ebrahim and Massoud Rajavi still at large

organisation, Diyala Provincial Council reported that another mass grave has been unearthed in Camp Ashraf. According to this report, the MEK has executed a number of its leaders and cadres and buried them in Camp Ashraf.

President of the Diyala Provincial Council Mr. Taleb Mohammed Hassan confirmed that the remains of some bodies found inside the grave belonged to people who died of natural causes, and there are people buried inside the camp after the MEK executed them presumably because of their dissent.

Parliamentary sources have previously reported that the remains of Kurds had been discovered in Camp Ashraf in a mass grave. In this case, Diyala Provincial Council said the remains now uncovered are those of the members of the MEK itself and do not relate to any other persons.

January 13, 2013 0 comments

Human Rights Abuse in the MEK

NO EXIT An Investigative Documentary on MKO

NO EXIT An investigative documentary, showing how the Mujahedin Khalgh Organization (MKO,MEK, Rajavi cult) treated its members

… An investigative documentary, showing how the Mujahedin Khalgh Organization (MEK) treated its members and the efforts made by the members to escape … Research suggests that most of the MeK rank-and-file are neither terrorists nor freedom fighters, but trapped and brainwashed people who would be willing to return to Iran if they were separated from the MeK leadership. Many members were lured to Iraq from other countries with false promises, only to have their passports confiscated by the MeK leadership, which uses physical abuse, imprisonment, and other methods to keep them from leaving …

Download NO EXIT An Investigative Documentary on MKO

December 24, 2012 0 comments

Human Rights Abuse in the MEK

French Journalist: MKO Members Infected with HIV

French journalist and author Thierry Meyssan said that the country’s government during the presidency of François Mitterrand supplied the anti-Iran terrorist Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO also known as the MEK, PMOI and NCR) with HIV-infected blood to be injected to defiant members and defectors.

Meyssan made the remarks in an interview with Seyed Mohammad Javad Hasheminejad, the secretary-general of the Habilian Association, a human rights group formed of the families of 17,000 Iranian terror victims.

Meyssan said that during the Iraqi-imposed war on Iran (1980-1988), while he was doing journalistic works and studying operations at blood transfusion centers, he was taken aback by understanding that the infected bloods in France were being given to the MKO instead of being perished.

The MKO claimed that it needs the blood to be injected to its members in case of being injured or sick while the bloods were HIV-infected and caused aggravatingly painful diseases, he said.

"After that I understood François Mitterrand’s wife had ordered the sale of (infected) bloods to the MKO and helped them in this regard," he added.

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

A May 2005 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 argued for the MKO to be taken off the US terror list.

The US formally removed the MKO from its list of terror organizations in early September, 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.

December 20, 2012 0 comments

The cult of Rajavi

The Cult of Mojahedin: A Modern Cult of Personality

At the present, Mojahedin Cult is notoriously reputed and referred to as the sole political-terrorist cult of personality

The inside and outside members
At the present, Mojahedin Cult is notoriously reputed and referred to as the sole political-terrorist cult of personality
Masud Rajavi complements his authoritarian leadership by fostering a personality cult that revolves primarily around himself and secondarily around his wife, Maryam. (The US State Department Report, Nov. 1992)

Cults are feverishly active all over the world and a grave feature of their menace is the deceit with which they distort the truth to trap the unwary. Cults generally tend to function in isolation and are usually remote from the society and keep away to have direct contact with people. However, for some purposes cults need to make contact with the outside world, that is, recruiting new members, fundraising and more. Sending the members to live among the free society is even more crucial when the cult comes to be a hypocritically political one that needs the society as the wheels to push the cult forth.

Although cults cut members off from easy and tete-a-tete contact with outsiders, there are a number of members in certain cults that live out of the cult among the ordinary people to fulfill the mentioned purposes. It does not mean that these outside members can escape tense, thought reform processes worked within the cult. These members seemingly living outside separate from the cult are also under direct and strict cult controls and undergo the same mechanisms that are used against the insiders:

In most live-in cults, every detail of life comes under group scrutiny. For example, there are dress codes, food restrictions, and enforced marriages or relationships. In such cults, the members generally live together at the headquarters or at specified locations around the country or over, seas and work for cult-owned enterprises. However, there are also cults whose devotees appear to remain active in quite a few major aspects of the outside world, earning a living outside the cult. But for all practical purposes these individuals also live under rules governing such crucial features of their personal life as the people with whom they associate, what happens to their money, whether they raise their own children, and where they live.

At the present, Mojahedin Khalq Organization (MKO/MEK/PMOI/NCR), or Mojahedin Cult/Cult of Mojahedin as it is notoriously reputed and referred to, may be the sole political-terrorist cult of personality that avails big number of live-in and live-out members. The group’s main bastion was once located in Camp Ashraf, located some 60 kilometers north of Baghdad in Iraq, but the majority of insiders have been relocated to a temporary transit location (TTL) near Baghdad’s airport. However, its headquarters are situated in Auvers-Sur-Oise in Paris under the name of National Council of Resistance (NCR), an officially recognized alias for MKO. But there are many countless umbrella and front groups aiding the cult in fundraising activities, recruitment, propaganda blitz, organizing rallies and so forth.

To the list of front groups can be added numerous political, social, charity, art and much more groups and societies wherein hardly you can trace them back to the mother group. They all function according to the taste and culture of the societies among whom the insiders live and mostly propagate under democratic standards. For instance, the women and girls officially active as ring members of MKO are forced to wear outfits covering all their body parts and the head. Even Maryam Rajavi herself in spite of dressing in colorful non-transparent outfit never shows bareheaded in the public. But there are many occasions in which women sympathizers, under the command and direction of the commanding members in charge, engage in activities in extravagant western fashions on behalf of MKO. It has to be also mentioned that many of these sympathizers are unaware of the real nature of MKO and work as propaganda tools to beguile the Westerners. As soon as they are recruited as the formal members, they have to embrace cult principles including the clothing codes.

Before September 28, when MKO was removed from the State Department’s list of FTO, it was a designated terrorist group and therefore the US persons and firms were generally prohibited from engaging in transactions with or providing services to the group. The key responsibility was thus on the US based umbrella groups active in making contracts with American firms as part of a lobbying campaign, hiring speakers and paying speaking fees, making arrangements for encouraging and hiring Iranian and non-Iranian masses for rallies, fund-raising and collecting donations, and more. Here is a few of these active front groups to name just in the US:

The Iranian-American Community of North Texas

Iranian-American Community of Northern California

California Society for Democracy in Iran

The Iranian American Cultural Association of Missouri (IACAM)

The International Solidarity for Democratic Change in Iran (ISDCI)

The Global Initiative for Democracy

U.S. Committee for Camp Ashraf Residents

The National Coalition of Pro-Democracy Advocates

References:

1. Thaler Singer, Margaret; Cults in Our Midst: The Continuing Fight Against Their Hidden Menace, p. 11.

Mojahedin.ws

November 27, 2012

November 28, 2012 0 comments

Human Rights Abuse in the MEK

MKO members fate as the victims continue to remain unsolved

The Humanitarian Cause Remaining Unsolved
Mojahedin Khalq is de-listed but the fate of its members as the victims continue to remain unsolved

In its November 2012 edition, Afrique Asie wrote; “The State Department bowed to the judicial The Humanitarian Cause Remaining Unsolved court ruling obligating it to a revisal of the PMOI designation. It was a historic victory for the Iranian Resistance at the end of a legal and political journey in Europe and then the US, with many ups and downs. Justice provided a positive answer everywhere to the PMOI’s demands”. It appears there are still agencies misinformed as to the true cause of a terrorist group’s removal from the list. The real story is in direct contradiction to the group’s diffusion of disinformation propaganda.

A US appeals court had ordered Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to decide within four months by October 1, whether to remove the designated terrorist Mojahedin Khalq Organization MKO/MEK/PMOI from the US FTO’s blacklist. Ambassador Daniel Benjamin, coordinator for counter-terrorism, had told reporters earlier in a conference that the group had misunderstood a recent court order that required the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to decide whether to remove the MEK from the terror list. According to the judges’ order, the Secretary of State had to make her decision by October 1 to keep the group on the list or remove it, but the order “did not mandate any particular result.”

The decision, however, was taken on the ground of a humanitarian move and MKO appears to have totally forgotten that in the process of its years-long lobbying efforts almost majority of the American former officials on the group’s payroll urged for removal of the group for the humanitarian cause of the people of Camp Ashraf and then Camp Liberty as a top agenda to facilitate their resettlement in third countries as soon as possible. Michael Mukasey, the former Attorney General, speaking in a Washington meeting arranged to urge delisting of MKO stated:

“The point of this move, of course, is to make it easier for the residents to be relocated outside Iraq. That’s the goal, as we all know. And that goal cannot be achieved so long as the State Department continues to make the United States the only country in the civilized world to designate the MeK as a terrorist organization. … it’s time to end this. The continued listing of MeK is the main obstacle to resettlement… .”

In a message sent by General James Jones to the same Washington Symposium, he stressed that “The right thing to do, the humanitarian thing to do, is for the United States to remove the terrorist listing currently ascribed to the people of Camp Ashraf and Camp Liberty, and to champion a program of third country repatriation as soon as possible”.

Or when Dennis Hastert, another former Congressman, tried to make a logical argument for delisting MKO at the same meeting, he said:

“But when there’s liberty and life of human beings at stake we have to make that the exceptional focus on what is their well-being and what is the right thing to do. And to try to sacrifice a group of people’s well-being, their life, their ability to have a decent life, a humanitarian existence, should not be stopped by some political considerations in trying to massage a political or diplomatic situation.”

And MKO was removed from the list. But did it change the fate of Ashraf and Liberty’s residents to be sent and resettled in other countries? Absolutely not. The residents are now placed in a humanitarian plight that can be condemned as inhumane and practiced only in cultic settlements. And of course, the brag and show of those meetings in which American advocates lauded delisting of MKO as initiative to end the agony of its members has come an end; their mission is fulfilled, the cashes paid, and they have no obligation to feel any sense of responsibility towards these enslaved people.

Maybe these officials are also amazed to see that how MKO has managed to promote a humanitarian cause overnight to be demonstrated a historic victory for its propaganda machine and the humanitarian move of the State Department as a bow to its demands. They were paid their share in a massive campaign to abuse human rights for unjust political causes. However, it is not all the story. Sometimes it is the US that decides which group is terrorist depending on how that group suits national and political interests. And of course, the only thing nobody cares about is the fate, agony and plights of who under the pretext of human rights issues continue to be abused and remain the real victims.

November 20, 2012 0 comments

Newer Posts

Older Posts