Mujahedin Khalq as a Destructive Cult

Source: Mojahedin Khalq Comrades Killed Fellows at Camp

An Iraqi source revealed that a large number of victims in a recent attack on the camp of the terrorist Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) were killed by their own colleagues, namely members of the terrorist group.

A well-informed Iraqi source, which spoke on the condition of anonymity, told Tasnim on Wednesday that the released video of recent clashes in the MKO’s training camp reveal that “most of the dead were actually killed by their own fellows at the camp.”

The terrorist group said that dozens of its members died in a raid on September 1 and blamed the Iraqi security forces for the deaths. Iraqi officials, however, strongly denied the allegations, and said that a preliminary investigation suggested they died as a result of infighting among camp residents.

“In the released video of the recent clashes in Camp Ashraf, footages of the victims of the group showed that most of them had been killed execution style,” the source added.

“Given its track record in liquidating certain members, MKO took advantage of the incident for more bloodshed and killed its members for propaganda purposes and to play the victim,” the source said. Mojahedin Khalq Comrades Killed Fellows at Camp

On September 1, 52 MKO terrorists, including some top commanders, were killed in clashes in MKO’s Camp Ashraf in Iraq’s eastern Diyala province.

The MKO is considered a terrorist group since it has been behind many cases of bombings and assassinations against the Iranian officials and people.

The group also fought alongside the regime of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein during the 8-year Iraqi-imposed war on Iran in 1980s.

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September 12, 2013 0 comments

Albania

MKO Building a Cult Bastion in Albania

MKO intensifies to itsugh cultic practices in Albanian refugee camp

Some cult experts believe that it is hard to totally annihilate a cult as they can grow offshoots in the manner of the mythical hydra, for each time one head was cut off, another moved in to replace it. The terrible truth about many of them is that they can easily and immediately adapt, recover and rebuild their organizational setup, rather than withering away, if partly disintegrated or broken into smaller groups. That is mainly because order structure and the authoritatively established system of hierarchy within the organization of cults can guarantee the replacement of a leader and guru in his or her absence and demise. MKO as a terrorist cult is no exception as it is rebuilding its cultic structure in any country its members are being transferred.

When Albanian Prime Minister, Sali Berisha, made the humanitarian offer to take about 210 members of MKO, the offer was at first rejected by the group’s leaders and the group’s propaganda machine kept lashing Mr. Kobler and condemning him for pressing relocation of residents to a country like Albania. Of course, Tirana made the offer under a pressure from the United States that was seeking a sanctuary for the members of the outcast terrorists whom no other country dared to accept. In fact, Albania eagerly accepted the imposed offer since the country pursues imitation of the United States in whatever it represents. Joining NATO a decade after the other former East European communist countries, Albania was granted the right to have a small share in the US’s military enterprise and to send some of its tiny military to missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

At first expressing reluctance to accept the offer made by Albania, as the group never agrees to any suggestion at initio, MKO leaders’ offered two options: “The first option is the immediate, even temporary transfer of all the residents to the US or to a European country, and permanent resettlement from there, or the return of all of the residents to Camp Ashraf and the continuation of the resettlement process from Ashraf, including transfer to Albania from Ashraf.”

But soon the group grabbed at the opportunity as the leaders realized there could be no better option than an immediate transfer to Albania to assess the chances of establishing a new cult bastion there. In contrast to the speculations that the relocation of the insiders would lead to diminish the imposed cultic practices, the current situation and condition of the insiders in Albanian refugee camp uncovers intensified instances of tough cultic practices even in the absence of the chief leaders.

To survive and also to recover, a cult and its leader/s need to isolate his/her followers from outsiders to ensure that the followers will only hear the cult’s propaganda. The isolation from outside influences and provocations protects the cult’s internalized belief system and keeps them away from the outside critical thinking that threatens the cult’s integrity. And MKO has turned Tiran’s refugee camp into another cult milieu just under the eyes of the world to continue the heavily controlled physical and psychological exercises. According to the news leaked out to the world outside, those members transferred to Albania are suffering the very same cult pressures they were going through in cult bastions like Ashraf and Liberty. Shirin Moini, one of the members transferred to Albania, is reported to have managed making a secret contact with her family asking for help. Her family quoted her complaining of having a tough time in the camp because of the intensified cultic control and pressures just under the eyes of the Albanian authorities who keep the asylum seekers in the training camp to educate them before being sent out to continue a free life in the society.

The organizational control and cult-like practices exercised by the MKO at Camp Liberty, and now in Albania, have grown worse than those manipulated against members in Camp Ashraf. MKO leaders know that Liberty and Tirana’s refugee camp are not like Ashraf. They are not isolated, closed locations cut off from the outside world. As a result, the leaders have enhanced the organizational control to prevent defection and the consequent collapse of the cult. What has changed in these places in comparison to Ashraf is that Camp Ashraf was under MKO’s full control and no one could interfere in the organization relations. Unlike there, Liberty and Tiran’s refugee camp are open to and dependent on the outside world and external control. What the members shut up in these camps need is to be kept under the strict supervision of camps authorities and to stop concentration of the members in groupthink residences as it is ongoing as a matter of routine. But first of all the authorities have to be enlightened about the threats and dangers of a terrorist cult now dressed in a pro-democratic camouflage.

August 26, 2013 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization

Black Dream: A Documentary on the MKO

Iranian channel 3 tonight will broadcast a documentary on the MKO’s secret operations named “Black Dream”.

The documentary that will be shown in 15, thirty minute parts, reveals for the first time new facts on the MKO, according to Fars News Agency.

The film was produced by Iman Goudarzi.

About the researches to make such a documentary he told FNA:”To produce this documentary, we traveled to Iraq and visited Camp Ashraf.”

“The film reviews the MKO’s history and portrays its current situation and its defectors condition. The first part of the Black Dream will be aired tonight at 20:15.

August 18, 2013 0 comments

Human Rights Abuse in the MEK

MKO tries to make another Camp Ashraf in Albania

Shirin Moini was deceived into the MKO when she was 20 and an undergraduate student at Isfahan University. She then was transferred to the Camp Ashraf and broke all family ties for 9 years without her family knowing where she was.

Last month Shirin; now a dissent member within the organization transferred to Albania and managed to provide a mobile phone and contact her family asking for help. She informed family of her intention of living an ordinary life in the free world and out of the MKO cult’s boundaries. She had no access to the Internet and had no e-mail address.

Her contact with the family cut, after her secret relations with her family revealed to the cult officials. It is now for several weeks that her family has no news of Shirin.

Zanan Iran Association- female dispatched members of MKO – has announced a plea for help to free Mrs Shirin Moini from the MKO.

Her father Mohammad Moini and her sisters in Iran are asking for help to be able to meet her. Her cousin is Zahra Moini, now in Germany, who had been in the MEK herself.

August 12, 2013 0 comments

Human Rights Abuse in the MEK

Human Shields to Protect MKO

MKO leaders adopt inhuman approaches to use members as human shields

Reportedly, Qayda Kambash, an Iraqi parliamentarian, in her latest comment has remarked that “the reason of delay in expulsion of MKO members from Iraq is due to the pressure put by MKO leaders on the members.” She has further added that “MKO leaders’ fear of devastation of their group has led them to use Ashraf and Liberty residents as human shields to protect their own lives. That is why the group has resorted to lies, deception and suppression of own members.”

Ms. Kambash is not the first to make a comment about the inhuman approach by MKO to use members as human shields. Through any taken opportunity in the past, there has been an attempt by ex-members and other experts to tell the world of the concerns about the members not living but enslaved by MKO against their own will. Of course, the world couldn’t but they could easily see how the terrorist cult was exploiting insiders as human shields to safeguard its own entity rather than being the least concerned about the members themselves. At least through the past two years and since the implementation of decision by the Iraqi government to relocate members from Camp Ashraf, the Rajavies proved to be determined to preserve the insiders as human shields to construct a secure bulwark against a national and global decisiveness.

The transfer of the control of Camp Ashraf to Iraqi forces since 2008 and the Iraqi government’s determination to make a decisive decision about the residents of Ashraf enraged the group’s leaders and soon MKO propaganda machine initiated an intensive campaign against the Iraqi government. MKO’s first reaction was arranging a series of suicidal operations. On July 29, 2009 there was a report of deadly clashes between hundreds of Iraqi police forces and the members of MKO residing in Camp Ashraf that left 11 members dead and scores injured from the both side. While the reasons for the clash was said to be unclear at first, few knew that it was a pre-organized self-destruction plan by a number of Rajavi’s devotees to provoke Iraqi forces to trigger the clash that was well videotaped and broadcasted by the organization itself.

While the Iraqi forces and their commanders were still under the shock of the suicidal and violent behavior of the camp residents, MKO felt easy to feed its propaganda machine for months. Of course, soon the Iraqi authorities, not at first acquainted with the group’s self-destructive tactics, became more cautious to adopt appropriate methods when dealing with MKO. Despite all these efforts, MKO has been focusing on an interlocking violent-political campaign to draw attention of the international community through fraudulent claims and misinformation, most of which are distributed and circulated by the group’s paid or naïve political advocates. By rising tension at the residential camps against the Iraqi plans that are aimed at rightful measures to have more control over the camp, MKO leaders also intend to show a martyred image of the residents to question the legitimacy and capability of the Iraqi government in holding the control of Camp Liberty.

Accommodated with all the means of comfort and luxury in their residences in European countries, leaders claim to be making their best to protect the members in Iraq. But none of them feels any responsibility to explain why the cost of defending MKO is to be paid just by the rank and files. As evidences show, many MKO high-rankings can leave Iraq and reside in another country if necessary. In other words, they are not at all worried about their own future and thus, there is no need to risk their life and line as human shields in protection of the group in Iraq. The best means at hand at the present are the residents at Camp Liberty to be victimized as human-shields to bulwark Rajavi’s cult structure. However, as the international community is misinformed of what is really happening within the camp, comments made by personalities like Ms. Kambash can be trusted as evidences that MKO leaders are determined to use members residing at Camp Liberty as hostages and human shields just for organizational purposes.

August 7, 2013 0 comments

Former members of the MEK

I was trapped by the MKO for the love of Europe

The mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) is a political organization with paramilitary structure. It was founded by Muhammad Hanif Nezhad in 1965. The MKO launched armed struggle against the Shah of Iran. However, it was harshly oppressed by the then Security and Intelligence Organization of Iran (Savak). The group leaders were sentenced to death under the order of Shah’s military court. They were accused of committing acts against national security and assassination of Iranian and American nationals. Some were executed and the others were imprisoned.

After the Islamic Revolution in 1979, the MKO could manage to recruit large number of people from different levels of society, under the leadership of Massoud Rajavi and Musa Khiabani. Many people were deceived to join the group and then they were not allowed to leave the organization any more. After the American invasion to Iraq in 2003 the group was disarmed and some of its member’s could endure ruthless efforts to escape the cult.

Ronak was tricked into the MKO when she was 15 years old and after bearing tough circumstance she could manage to escape the group’s camp and join the Red Cross. We briefly interviewed Ronak while she was visiting the 26the International Book Fair in Tehran.

Dreaming of Europe

– When and how did you join the MKO?

– After I finished middle school, I and my brother traveled to Turkey illegally. I was fifteen dreaming of going to European universities and my brother was seeking a job. My uncle who was an MKO supporter lived in Turkey. We left Iran in hope of going to Europe by the help of our uncle. My uncle said that we should have had passports in order to travel to Europe. We couldn’t go there illegally. He promised me that I would be sent to an Arabic country with a group and from there they would facilitate my trip to Europe. They sent me to Camp Ashraf before my brother was sent. When my brother found that I was sent to Iraq, he came to find me.

– In which year?

– In 2002 we entered the camp and in 2006 we escaped.

– Is your uncle still in MKO camp?

– My uncle distanced from the MKO and returned to Iran after he found out that all the organization had said was a conspiracy.

– How did you see Camp Ashraf when you arrived there?

– When I arrived in Camp Ashraf, I was shocked I got temporary dementia for four months.

– What did you think of Camp Ashraf as a military camp?

– I had left Iran in the love for Europe but I entered a military atmosphere. I was shocked due to extreme fear and anxiety. I was so heavily under pressure that I forgot everything. When I wanted to fill my biography form, I could not even remember my brother’s name until I gradually got familiar with the system rulling Ashraf and recalled my past.

– Did you have any contact with your family during that period of time?

– No, I had no contact with my family although I missed them a lot. This worsened my illness.

– And what about your brother?

– I was allowed to visit my brother every six months under the supervision of commanders and my superiors.

– Tell us about your life in camp Ashraf what classes were you supposed to take?

– The new comers were taught the history and the activities of the MKO. There were also some classes for brainwashing; they emptied all we had in our mind, instead they indoctrinated their own ideas in our minds. We also received military training in Camp Ashraf.

After the American invasion to Iraq, some gaps had appeared in the MKO relations so the leaders held English, Arabic and music classes. Before that, classes were only ideological and political.

They said: if you get back to Iran, you’ll be killed

– Did the classes have any impact on you?

– No, it was all fear and panic. They tried to make us forget our family and free life but Iwe never quit, I never kept calm.

I was all the time busy fighting. They intimidated us that if we got back, we would be hurt or killed or imprisoned. We were told that no one would believe that we hadn’t go there with our own free will. I was really terrified.

– Were there many new recruits?

– During the time I was there, there were not so many new recruits. Not many women were recruited but the few people who were deceived were brought there from Turkey or Europe.

– How about your living conditions?

– Everything was like a military camp. Uniforms, not so pleasant food and extreme fatigue that did not let members think of anything else. When you went to bed you just fell asleep.

They told my mother: come get your daughter’s body

– How did you escape?

– After the Americans arrived, Camp Ashraf was disarmed and some of prisoners [members] ran away. My brother went to American Camp from where he tried to help me get released. When the MKO saw I was determined to leave the camp, they told my mother that I committed suicide so she had to come get my dead body. When my mother came, she asked to visit my brother and after they met, they couldn’t leave each other. I was so scared that my Mom would get into trouble. They were likely to take my Mom as hostage in order to keep me in the group…

– Tell us about your feelings when you got back to home. What was your family’s reaction?

– I was so happy. It was like a dream. I could never get along with living in Camp Ashraf where I missed my loved ones and had no contact with them. [When I returned], I was under severe mental pressure because relatives used to ask me about what had happened to me in my trip to Europe. Most of them do not know about my experience in Iraq. They think that I went abroad to study but I couldn’t finish my studies because I missed my family!

– Didn’t you face any legal problem after your return to Iran?

– There is no legal problem. I just shouldn’t take jobs in security organizations.

– Do you still live with your love for Europe?

– No, when I got back to Iran, I continued my studies and I no more dreamed of Europe. My brother works with his car.

– Do you follow the news of the MKO?

– I used to watch their satellite TV with feeling of hatred and anger. I felt pity for those people who were imprisoned there.

Friendly chatting was forbidden in the MKO

-Did you have friends there?

– It was Unimaginable. In the MKO, it was forbidden to chat with your friends. They held meetings in which we were allowed to talk but not together.

– How was the meeting?

– They treated in a way that we felt guilty. They questioned us. they told us words like:” You are the regime’s mercenary”!

– How was your relationship with commanders?

– Terrible. I was a problem for them because I thought about my family. They put me under severe pressure in order to obey them. I was emotionally injured while that time could be best time of my life. Now, I’m happy because I could get released from their prison. Of course I still suffer the emotional injuries of that period of time.

– Did they torture you?

– I was not tortured physically but I was tortured psychologically. Sometimes, you were kept in Bangal. It was like solitary confinement. The life in Bangals was terribly hard.

– What is a Bangal?

– It was a place located far away in the Camp. You were imprisoned in a Conex which was so terrifying. You always panicked that they would harm you there.

There were no marriages in Camp Ashraf? How about sexual problems?

Men and women were separated but women in the high ranks were made Rajavi’s wives. Others had no right.

Translated by Nejat Society

August 1, 2013 0 comments

U.N. envoy accuses Iran group’s leaders in Iraq of rights abuses

UNITED NATIONS – The outgoing U.N. special envoy to Iraq on Tuesday accused the leaders of an Iranian dissident group U.N. envoy accuses Iran group's leaders in Iraq of rights abuses at a camp in Iraq of human rights abuses, an allegation the movement dismissed as baseless.

Members of the Iranian dissident group Mujahadin-e-Khalq living in Camp Hurriya near Baghdad have been transferred there from Camp Ashraf north of the Iraqi capital, where they had lived for nearly a decade until last year.

The group and its political wing, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, have complained repeatedly about the conditions at Camp Hurriya, formerly known as Camp Liberty, and security problems.

U.N. envoy Martin Kobler, who will take up a similar position in the Democratic Republic of Congo next month, told the Security Council that the United Nations had received complaints about the Iranian group’s leadership at the camp.

"Of increasing concern are the human rights abuses in Camp Hurriya itself by the camp leadership," Kobler said. "Hundreds of daily monitoring reports suggest that the lives of Camp Hurriya members are tightly controlled."

"A significant number of residents have reported to U.N. monitors that they are not free to leave the camp, to participate in the resettlement process offered by UNHCR, to contact family members outside Iraq, or to have contact with other relatives even within the camp itself," he said, referring to the U.N. refugee agency.

Some Hurriya residents reported being denied access to medical treatment by camp leaders, while others spoke of verbal and other forms of abuse for disagreeing with camp leaders or voicing the desire to leave, Kobler said.

The Mujahadin-e-Khalq, taken off the U.S. list of terrorist organizations last year, calls for the overthrow of Iran’s Shi’ite Muslim clerical leadership. It fought alongside the forces of Iraq’s late Sunni Muslim dictator Saddam Hussein in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war.

The group is no longer welcome in Iraq under the Shi’ite Muslim-led government that came to power after U.S.-led forces invaded and toppled Saddam in 2003. Some exiles say they suspect that Baghdad might be ready to send them back to Iran.

There have been two rocket attacks on Camp Hurriya this year, one in February and another last month. Some 10 residents were killed and 71 wounded.

‘PERSONALIZED ATTACKS’

Shahin Gobadi, a spokesman for the National Council of Resistance of Iran, denied the allegations of Kobler, whom the Iranian dissidents have long accused of lying and covering up facts about what they say are substandard conditions at Hurriya.

"These allegations are so baseless that the Iranian resistance has on 50 occasions called for an independent fact-finding mission to investigate all these claims and all other lies that Kobler has disseminated," he said.

"But neither Kobler nor the government of Iraq has agreed to any independent investigation."

The United Nations has defended Kobler and denied the allegations about a cover-up.

"We regret that MeK and its supporters continue to focus on public distortions of the U.N.’s efforts to promote a peaceful, humanitarian solution on Camp Ashraf and, in particular, its highly personalized attacks on the U.N. envoy for Iraq," U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky said.

There are around 100 Iranians remaining at Camp Ashraf who refuse to leave, Kobler said. He described the situation at Ashraf as tense.

Last week lawyers for the families at Camp Hurriya held a news conference in New York to present a petition to the United Nations calling for an immediate return to Camp Ashraf.

The Mujahadin-e-Khalq insists that the United States, whose forces initially helped them settle in Ashraf after the 2003 invasion, still bears responsibility for their safety.

(Editing by Mohammad Zargham)

By Louis Charbonneau

July 18, 2013 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

The Shameless Pro-MEK Lobbying Continues

Just because the MEK is no longer listed as a terrorist organization by the U.S., that doesn’t mean that the shameless shilling and lying on their behalf has stopped. Here is Hugh Shelton:

For years, freedom-loving people around the world worked together under the courageous leadership of Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, using every tool at their disposal, to get the wrongful designation of the Iranian opposition group, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) as a terrorist group removed.

Finally, the “good guys” won, empowering the most powerful group outside Iran in favor of disposing of the current Iranian leadership and providing the freedom-loving people of Iran a chance for democracy.

When the MEK was originally designated as a terrorist organization, that wasn’t wrongful. It was an acknowledgment that the group had employed and continued to employ terrorist tactics to pursue their political goals. The current pro-MEK line is that the group has renounced those tactics, which is debatable, but it’s the purest revisionism to say that the group never deserved to be labeled as a terrorist group. Given that the MEK is a totalitarian cult, it is crazy to think that their leaders have anything in common with “freedom-loving people.” In the extremely unlikely and horrifying event that the MEK obtained real power, they would not preside over anything resembling a democratic government, but would establish their own deranged brand of authoritarianism. If not because they are being paid to say it, why would otherwise sane and intelligent people repeat such obvious propaganda again and again?

I don’t accept it, but I understand the warped logic that says that Americans should support the MEK because it hates the current Iranian government. But even obsessive Iran hawks have to recognize that siding with a group reviled in Iran for its role in the Iran-Iraq war is doomed to fail, and every high-profile American that praises and lobbies on behalf of this group is another propaganda victory for the Iranian government. How better to confirm the Iranian government’s most self-serving claims about the U.S. than to have so many former U.S. officials and politicians romanticize the MEK into a group of democratic freedom fighters?

By Daniel Larison

July 17, 2013 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization's Propaganda System

Beware of a Cult’s Abuse of Propaganda

MKO terrorist cult abuses the power of propaganda to raise public prestige

Nobody can deny the power of propaganda as a relevant and effective tool to convince people to do what the exercisers like them to. But it becomes a much threatening and dangerous approach if abused by a terrorist cult for a sham demonstration of public support or attempts at mobilizing it, particularly after a total fall in the aftermath of a full scale violent and terrorist campaign. That is the approach adopted by MKO, Mujahidin Khalq Organization, after it failed to overthrow the Iranian regime through decades-lasted armed warfare that led to countless deaths from among Iranian people. Now active in Western counties under a pro-democratic disguise, MKO is on a regular move of expensive propaganda campaign to muster support to be cleaned of its flagrant past and to buy a forged prestige. An example is the group’s highly propagated gathering on 22 June in Villepinte, Paris, by hiring big crowds and speakers as supporters and advocates.

These are good historical evidences to prove the simplicity of considering MKO as devotee of freedom and democracy. Discrepancy between chanted mottos and actual practice of democracy is a product of disapproving the democracy itself. To bring off democracy, mottos should tally with practices. MKO’s fierce campaign in the past well depicts the wrong direction that the group had taken for the cause of democracy. How can it claim to be following the principles of democracy when the very same president-elect of the group, Maryam Rajavi, is elected through no social and inter-organizational voting but appointed by her despot husband, Massoud Rajav? The autocratic structure of MKO’s leadership has discredited it to a kind of Stalinist dictatorship. Thus, how can MKO guarantee that it wouldn’t adapt claims of democracy for practice of autocracy?

That is precisely correct to say those who struggle for democracy cannot be terrorists because democracy absolutely discards any form of violence. But violence has been an innately distinguished feature of MKO from its very formation. The key solution to accomplish organizational and ideological achievements was believed to be through practice of violence, the lack of which led any struggle for democracy and freedom to total failure.

The advocates of MKO, particularly those hired for the June gathering, are well aware that the group is at the pass of a critical juncture and in need of applicable instruments and whoever and whatever help and offer to survive. We do not know exactly how much each hired speaker and advocate were paid, but they, for sure, and we know that the great challenge the world faces today is terrorism and MKO has so far failed to prove any commitment to democracy. In representing definitions of democracy, MKO oversteps those of the West. By drilling its exaggeratedly theorized democracy into the West, the group reminds the West that it has a rather more enormous capacity to overshoot the Western adopted democracy. At the same time, it has not the least respect for democracy to practice it, not even in its primitive form, neither for the insiders nor for the outsiders.

Nowhere can you find so ruthless methods of brainwashing put into practice under the cover of democracy as within MKO. The fact is that MKO is innately a terrorist group, regardless of its de-proscription, and its attempts to hold at democracy never wash its hands off its past crimes. Through the power of propaganda, MKO strives to convince the world that it has increased supports as Iran’s legitimate opposition and the sole alternative to the current ruling power in Iran. Facts are stubborn things and MKO, a typical of absolute hypocrisy and duplicity, is on a regular path of endless plots to fool the world.

Neither have we believed MKO struggles for a secular, democratic, and non-nuclear republic in Iran, as it circulates, nor have the claimed advocates any trust for such a capacity in MKO. Even if thousands of supporters, as MKO brags, gather to chant over and over that the group has shifted to democracy and has denounced terrorism, we can believe it only if a leopard can change its spots, as people say. Even worse, the underlying, serious problem is that a terrorist group has transformed into a dangerous cult of personality. And what a horrible nightmare may haunt societies where a terrorist cult abuses the power of propaganda.

July 14, 2013 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization's Propaganda System

MKO Stages Public Show to Display a Cult’s Muscle

MKO’s yearly public show is a cultic approach to garner public attention

If you tell a lie over and over again, people will start to believe it. Then, the easiest way a cult may exploit to instill its reprogramming on others is repetition, in the same way advertising and propaganda work. That is one of the approaches adopted by MKO to garner a social attention by setting a public show every year around a certain date in June. Michael Rubin, an ex- adviser for Iran and Iraq at the Pentagon, seems to be just one amongst many Americans whom MKO has failed to fool. That is maybe because of his full understanding of Iranian people among whom he has lived for years. In his latest piece about MKO, once more he reiterates dishonesty of the group as a terrorist cult despite having bipartisan supporters in the Congress.

Iranians are politically engaged—even if not within the system—and did not hesitate to talk. Many spoke of their desire for alternatives. Some asked about the son of the late shah, living in exile in the United States. Others would speak more theoretically about a desire for a republic, a parliamentary democracy, or other alternative. The only thing on which Iranians agreed was their dislike of the Mujahedin al-Khalq Organization (MKO). Several years ago, I wrote a piece outlining their history and ideological evolution. Long story short, the group’s involvement in terrorism that killed not only regime officials but ordinary Iranian citizens, as well as their willingness to accept aid and shelter from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in the years after Iraq’s invasion of Iran, delegitimized the group in the face of the public they claim to represent.

The Clinton administration designated the MKO to be a terrorist group, but after years of lobbying—and buying support by paying huge honoraria to a bipartisan array of senior officials—the MKO was delisted in 2012. No longer being considered a terrorist group does not make the MKO democratic, however, as anyone who has ever studied their internal workers can attest. It is against this backdrop that this diary, written by a Kyrgyz student recruited to attend an MKO rally in Paris, is so interesting. It seems that the MKO leaders must now not only pay speakers to sing their praises at their rallies, but also the audience members. The MKO is not only a creepy cult, and willing to say anything to buy support regardless of the group’s record, but an empty shell as well. Let us hope that one day their remaining congressional supporters will recognize that if they truly want to bring change to Iran’s odious regime, they would best reach out to the Iranian people and not associate with groups which repel them.

However, still there is a question to put that how and when it happened that MKO transformed from a Marxist-oriented political group with a fundamental ideology of advocating armed warfare to what is today known as a cult of personality. Speculations fueled by a considerable bulk of studies as well as assertions by detached and former MKO members center on the fact that it was not an overnight transformation but a plot that hatched gradually through some lengthy process of guilefully outlined stages.

There are more than enough evidences to prove that the Rajavis, MKO’s self-appointed husband-wife leaders, had personal ambitions of establishing a cult of personality after a complete failure in armed warfare and facing an overall political stalemate that led their group into total isolation from the masses. Even before the initiation of the military phase and declaring armed struggle against the Iranian regime in 1980, some eminent political figures well acquainted with MKO anticipated its transformation into a cult sooner or later.

It may seem hard to believe that the first seeds of metamorphosis into a cult of personality were sown in France, believing to have the strongest democracy, after a shameful flight from Iran to initiate a heretic inter-organizational revolution within MKO. In fact, before MKO relocation to Iraq to execute cultic relations in Camp Ashraf as its main cult bastion, the cult thought had passed beyond its embryo stage at Auvers-Sur-Oise in Paris. The four-year settlement of MKO in France and a great accumulation of members made them engaged in a routine bureaucracy that caused a staff crisis. Many other factors such as daily-life problems, lack of a clear strategy in 1981 to 1985, critical detachment and separation of members and lack of motivation as a result of long residence in France, attractions of life and beauties of European countries all and all caused the organization suffer acute crises. Besides, Rajavi was receiving formal messages and invitations from Saddam Hussein for a complete transfer of the organization to Iraq. The group had been caught in a difficult dilemma since Iraq was at war with Iran and Saddam was the most hated man in the eyes of Iranian. As a matter of fact, move to Iraq was equal to involving in an unforgivable conspiracy against a nation for whom the group had promised freedom and democracy.

Although no more a designated terrorist group, MKO carries the stigma of being notoriously recognized as a dangerous cult of personality that freely roams the streets of the Western countries. The terrorists’ potentiality in utilization of violence for whatever political and social demands is a horrible nightmare enough to disturb societies. The possible disaster would be even worse if the terrorists are the breeds of a destructive cult. And what necessary precautions have those in Western countries taken to fight back the threats of a dangerous terrorist cult they themselves unshackled? There is no need to answer since people in Paris are used to seeing unknown crowds of different nationality gathered in regular rallies of the cult as a display of its muscle just in the heart of the capital.

July 13, 2013 0 comments

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