Personal Rights of Members in the MEK

Official American version of events at Camp Ashraf

2009 Human Rights Report: Iraq

Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor
2009 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices

(…)

a. Arbitrary or Unlawful Deprivation of Life
…

On July 28, clashes erupted at Ashraf in Diyala Province when the ISF attempted to establish a police presence inside the more than 3,400-person compound of the terrorist Iranian dissident group Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK). The clashes resulted in the deaths of 11 MEK members and injuries to 30 ISF officers. The government credibly claimed the MEK provoked the clashes by staging a violent demonstration to block the ISF from entering the compound.
(…)

d. Freedom of Movement, Internally Displaced Persons, Protection of Refugees, and Stateless Persons
…

There were allegations during the year that some of the 3,400 members of the MEK terrorist organization located at Ashraf were denied the right to leave under threat of reprisal from MEK leaders. These allegations were corroborated by several former Ashraf residents who had fled the camp. Individuals claimed to have been subjected to psychological and physical abuse, including threats of reprisal against family members and solitary confinement in Ashraf to discourage defections.
…

April 22, 2010 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization members' families

Families of Rajavi cult victims maintain their vigil outside Camp Ashraf

“…this son of mine was dead, but now he is alive; he was lost but now he has been found!” (Luke 15:24)

In February, when the MKO leaders realised that a group of Iranian families were to visit Camp Ashraf and would insist on visiting their relatives who were resident there, they used their propaganda to claim that the families are actually agents sent by the Iranian intelligence services and they have been sent to kill the MKO members and destroy the camp.

However, when pictures of the families were published on various websites, the MKO removed their false messages from their western funded propaganda media; their television channel, websites and print media. They suddenly realised that people are looking at them and wondering how it is that the “National Liberation Army” which was supposed to liberate a country of 70 million people, is crying foul and saying that 25 pensioners are able to destroy them in their own camp with nothing in their hands. Having said that, the 25 pensioners themselves each believe that they will destroy the cult single-handedly as they know that once the gates of Camp Ashraf are opened and people are allowed to decide for themselves, no-one would be left for the leaders of this terrorist cult and all their hostages will leave.

For the time being, Maryam Rajavi and some of her henchmen are riding on the backs of these hostages trapped in the Iraqi camp. They issue their stream of advertisement statements paid for with money stolen from Iraqi banks. The MKO began to take video clips of the families suffering outside the gate of the camp. They ridiculed them and their desperate situation while showing Maryam Rajavi portraying herself as a film star, a celebrity.

This ridiculous CIA funded and CIA backed propaganda of the cult in the west continued until the families decided to turn their banners and loud speakers towards the residents inside the camp so that any film taken by the MKO from inside the camp would have inevitably shown and recorded the simple demand of the families (or as the MKO was trying to pretend, the ‘agents of the regime’). Suddenly all the filming and broadcasting from the cult outlets stopped. They could no longer show them since the simple demand would be seen on their simple banners – let us see our children.

The MKO cult leaders then waited and expected that the old men and women with no place to stay at the gates of the camp would one by one and in a matter of days, fall ill or become tired and would eventually leave. They would not be able to survive under simple tents for much longer. This may have been true and some of the older and sick families had to leave the gate after a while and go back home to attend their problems. But the MKO leaders did not imagine that others with the same goal and overcoming the same problems would not leave. And they little imagined that there are many more who will replace the ones who can no longer continue.
For the families, it makes no difference now who will meet their loved ones first. Now the families, which are growing in number by the day, are in the sixth week of their picket in front of the camp. They have taken a collective oath not to leave the gate until they release all the children and all the hostages from Rajavi cult’s garrison.

To view latest pictures from the gate of Camp New Iraq (formerly Ashraf) click here

March 16, 2010 0 comments

MEK Camp Ashraf

New regulation of “no questions” forced inside the MKO camp in Iraq

Following the report of December 24, 2009 entitled “New wave of dissatisfaction and disarray in Camp Ashraf”

in which information from within camp Ashraf was given to the families of the victims of the Rajavi cult, we would like to announce that a significant and growing number of the forces inside Ashraf Garrison are now dissatisfied. They have serious doubts and questions about the Mojahedin Khalq Organisation and its leadership. They do not have complete trust in the organisation anymore. This has resulted in the creation of a widening gap between the leadership and the body of the organisation inside the camp. The growing unrest can be seen from the rapidly growing number of slogans being written clandestinely on the walls in public places inside the camp against the Mojahedin Organisation and its leadership.

Members now ask questions about their doubts over the past years of practices of the Mojahedin organisation and its leadership. The unlimited questions cover many aspects of the past practices which of course are all left unanswered and no commander is ready to even tackle any of them.

This has resulted in many members effectively leaving the organisation, but the Leaders and the commanders do not allow them get out of the camp and have in fact imprisoned them inside the camp. The organisation of course has a history of refusing its members to even leave the camp for a few hours in order to meet and visit their families.

Rajavi has recently been trying to calm the members by diverting their attention with a series of messages and propaganda tapes. The messages clearly forbid any questioning in any field by any member. Alongside this, members are now forced to do hard physical labour including agricultural, production and services for unlimited hours. This is believed to be affecting the mental judgement of the members as the creation of exhausting fatigue renders them unable to think about their problems and questions. According to reports coming out of the camp this practice of exhaustion is even more useful in the case of the known members who have been identified as disaffected.

Sahar Family Foundation in Baghdad is urging the international community, human rights organisations as well as the authorities in the Iraqi Government and Western governments to look at the situation of Ashraf Garrison and stop the dangers posed by the leaders of the group against the people residing there. Sahar Family Foundation is announcing as it has always announced before its willingness to help and cooperate with Iraqi and International bodies in this humanitarian mission.

March 13, 2010 0 comments

Massoud Rajavi

Rajavi comes to answer!

It is common in any relatively closed, hierarchical system with an emphasis on respectful and unquestionable obedience to the leader, on whom no sufficient checks and balances is placed, that nothing can make the leader accountable to the followers and to the outside world. For sure you will be cynical when you read a leader in guiding other people’s evolution claims his readiness to be accountable for his misdeeds. You may even become more suspicious especially when you hear Massoud Rajavi, believing in the necessity of deceiving unenlightened to rule over them and to advance his cult-like ambitions, is making the claim. In his message of January 20, he calls a set of imaginary audiences and declares his readiness to be accountable for the charges imposed on him during the last three decades from inside and outside the organization:
… for the time being I suffice to mention a point on Mojahedin, NLA, council of resistance and heavy charges made against us on the part of the regime as well as its agents and supporters. I am committed to account for all accusations and to clarify them for the Iranian people.
The reason why Rajavi has seemingly retreated his egocentric position of unaccountability to the inferiors is not clear; however, his statements imply that he still deems all these accusations related to the Iranian regime and its agents. As a result, he never trouble himself to answer these questions and doubts and also accuses his critics as infiltrators and agents of the Iranian regime. However, since his desired audience is outside the cultic circle of his organization and unfamiliar with his past history, Rajavi’s democratic and self-righteous gesture may justify it that coming to answer the questions posed on him is his absolute right. In this regard, we are to take a brief look at the concept of accountability in MKO’s organizational and ideological system and ideological revolution as well as the past history of Rajavi and his companions in defining this concept. Although these discussions are not novel or significant for those who have experienced the relations of Rajavi, they may be of a high interest for those having a superficial familiarity with the organization. The statements made by Mehdi Abrishamchi, the ex-husband of Rajavi’s present wife (Maryam Azdanlu), on the position of MKO leader may clarify the demagogic and fallacious claims of Rajavi. Referring to the concept of monotheism, Abrishamchi writes:
Theoretically, we know that God is one, yes there is one God and that is the main principle of our ideology yet the significant point is knowing the effects of this principle on the life of individuals.
Furthermore, he materializes the social effect and function of the monotheism:

In a summary, when an individual knows the leadership of the revolution and put him in his own position and notices not to be entangled with those issues whose solution lays in the hands of the leader, his intervention in ideological issues will be equal to his general echelon of qualifications in the organization and a balance is achieved. This individual never takes any position upper than that of the leadership in ideological recognition, if so, he may be claiming the position of the leader who is to be followed.
In a nutshell, inside the ideological, political, and organizational framework of Rajavi and also the larger echelon of the organization, any doubt and question on leadership and his actions, purposes and objectives is equal to an attempt of usurping and claiming the leadership status; from the viewpoint of Abrishamchi and Rajavi it is absolute polytheism and heresy whose punishment is organizational and ideological apostasy. According to Abrishamchi:
As mentioned already, inferiors to the ideological leader and his deputy are all accountable to them and their own upper-rankings. Yet, who is Massoud accountable to? Just to revolution. Ideologically, he is accountable to nobody except God. All members have rankings to whom they are accountable yet Masoud is not accountable to anyone except God.
He openly states that anyone coming to doubt the leadership and to question him has intentionally or unintentionally put himself in the position of God. In other words, as God is not accountable to anybody, MKO’s leadership is not accountable to the inferiors as well. In fact “Leadership can not bear any accountability to the inferiors”.
Now the question is that what is the destiny of someone who failed to recognize the defined position of the leadership in the organization and wanted to deal with it like the ordinary relations of the society? Abrishamchi takes the same position as that of Rajavi in this statement and puts the critic in the position of a convict to be charged with any accusation like being a detached member, betrayer and infiltrator:
As soon as we sit to judge Massoud and make accusations against him, and since his past history of competence looms in our mind, we immediately notice we can be a judge of this court just when we are not charged and accused ourselves since we have to first ponder our own charges to be able to speak about the accused one (Massoud).
It has to be pointed out that if the statements of Abrishamchi are not confirmed by Rajavi or he deems them to be distorted or changed he is welcomed to deny them completely. In this way, it may be reasonable to confirm Rajavi’s honesty in his recent statement. Of course, these are some instances of Rajavi’s failure in bearing criticism and accountability. He has always promised to answer ambiguities and questions arisen yet breaks his promise to kill time. We can also refer to the destiny of a number of the critics of Rajavi inside organization who had a tragic ending like fabricated suicide, accident, drowning, self-immolation, escape, heart attack, etc and have been buried somewhere in camp Ashraf or even outside the martyred cemetery of Mojahedin mainly because Rajavi calls them fetid bodies. Others were slaughtered in forced military operations like Eternal Light and thus, Rajavi not only succeeded to get rid of them all but also benefitted a propaganda blitz on their death as martyrs.

*All references are quoted from two speeches made by Mehdi Abrishamchi titled “on the ideological revolution inside MKO”.

March 6, 2010 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization members' families

Families urge President Talebani helping them visit their children

Dear Mr. Talebani, President of the Republic of Iraq

We, some of the families of the residents of Camp New Iraq (formerly Ashraf) have been denied access to our children for over 20 years due to the deceitful policies of the Mojahedin Khalq Organisation.

Families of some of the captives in Camp Ashraf, Outside the gate, February 2010

We have gathered from different places such as Iran, Canada, … in the land of Iraq to visit our loved ones. During the last two weeks of our stay here, the leaders of this organisation have refused our demand to meet our families on the direct order of Massoud Rajavi, fearing that such meetings may lead to the ability of our children to decide for themselves and break free from this organisation and join the free world.

We urge your good self, while condemning the anti-humane actions of Massoud Rajavi, to order the facilitation of free meetings between ourselves and our children.

Families of some of the captives in Camp Ashraf

February 18, 2010

CC:
Mr. Noori Al Maliki, Prime Minister of Iraq
Ms. Vojdan Michel, Human Rights Minister of Iraq
Mr. Ad Melkert, UN representative in Iraq

February 28, 2010 0 comments

The Ideology of the MEK

MKO; Ideology Vs Ideology – 2

History has seen various ideologies that generally have been of the closed type. The most famous ideologies “Liberalism “ , “ Marxism” and “ Religion” are significant examples of closed ideologies that undemocratically view themselves as righteous.
Mujahedin Khalq Organization is the living instance of closed ideologies
The followers of such ideologies have prepared superficial answers to every question. They simply formulate and solve the most complicated problems of the world and never see any ambiguity or mistake in their analysis. The leaders of closed ideologies are not knowledgeable enough although they have enormous claims of helping humanity. They don’t believe in necessity of challenge, research and efforts to progress in their path. Thus their absolute approach and their non-dimensional view lead them to decline.

Mujahedin Khalq Organization is the living instance of closed ideologies which fanatically sticks to its cult-like doctrine. Justifying all phenomena along with its objectives, MKO represents a thought of which the social function supposes the absolute right of understanding the truth for itself and never believes in exchanging, choosing or adapting other thoughts. The consequence of closing the doors against external thoughts or communities is the declining situation in which MKO is trapped now.

On the opposite side, the supporters of open ideologies view problems relatively, dynamically and depending on phases. Although they believe in the righteousness of their values and ideas, they see themselves as responsible for moving toward growth of the values they are constantly reconstructing, elevating and flourishing.

The absolutism of MKO ideology has led it to an irrational society without variety of thoughts and a cult of personality.

The type of relationship between human and ideology has caused violence and tyranny in MKO. The closed ideology of MKO wants the human for the ideology so the members of Mujahedin serve their ideology.

That’s why they see an undemocratic legitimacy in their social and political functions.

The leaders of mujahedin and especially Massoud Rajavi do not recognize the knowledge and will of individual human beings denying their rights to decide for their own future. That’s the substantial characteristic of their closed ideology which ends in the cult of personality around Massoud Rajavi. For MKO change, evolution, perfection and continuous growth have been replaced by fossilization and dogmatism.

Thus, one cannot see any change in the cult-like system organized in MKO or in MKO’s language toward its supporters or against its dissidents. Although Maryam Rajavi makes too much effort to draw a democratic, modern progressive image of its organization, the reality, based on testimonies and evidences, proves the opposite fact.

By Mazda Parsi

February 24, 2010 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization members' families

Mojahedin Khalq refuses family visits

Iraqis urged to help relatives outside Camp Ashraf

After ten days of a stand-off, a small group of Iranian families have staged a sit-in outside the

After ten days of a stand-off, a small group of Iranian families have staged a sit-in outside the gates of Camp Ashraf in Diyala province in Iraq

gates of Camp Ashraf in Diyala province in Iraq. The families’ simple, straightforward and only demand is that they be able to meet with their relatives who are trapped inside the camp. Camp Ashraf still houses around 3500 members of the terrorist Mojahedin-e Khalq organisation which the Government of Iraq plans to remove from the country. From the start, Iraqi security forces who guard Camp Ashraf would not allow the families to enter the camp because they could not guarantee their safety. Instead, the Iraqis told the MKO to release the handful of individuals concerned to meet with their families before returning to the camp.

So far the Mojahedin leaders are not cooperating. The MKO’s immediate reaction to the family visits was to state that “agents of the clerical regime’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security are being dispatched to Camp Ashraf under the cover of family members of Ashraf residents, the Iraqi committee responsible for suppression of the residents, under the instructions of Nouri al-Maliki, has intensified cruel and inhumane siege on Ashraf”.

A quote from Massoud Rajavi stated that members were not allowed to visit with their families even if an MKO minder was present.

The MKO’s advocates in Britain and America also joined the fray and demanded of their respective governments to intervene to stop the Iraqis harassing them and to ‘protect the human rights of Camp Ashraf’s residents’. But, in all these cries for help, no mention was made that it was the MKO leaders who were not allowing the members to leave the camp and visit with their families outside the camp.

Although responsibility for Camp Ashraf was transferred to the Government of Iraq on January 1 2009, America still maintains a unit of 25 soldiers inside the camp to protect the MKO – which is on the US terrorism list. However, in this latest episode of family visits, the Americans refused to challenge Iraqi jurisdiction. Iraqi soldiers have not allowed the families to go inside the camp, but nor have they attempted to prevent their sit-in.

Finally, two days ago on the 19th February, the MKO admitted in their website Iran Efshaa’gar that

“up until now we didn’t want to make a fuss. We believed that if we avoided any publicity or confrontation, the MKO would co-operate out of humanity. Now we have stayed a week and they don’t let us visit so we will sit here until we find out what happened to our children. We demand that Iraqis do something to help us.”

the families and not ‘agents of the Iranian regime’ were the real problem and that the MKO itself was refusing to let the members have contact with their families.

A quote from Massoud Rajavi stated that members were not allowed to visit with their families even if an MKO minder was present. This is a new development. In previous attempts to have family visits, the MKO would not allow members out because of the fear they would run away. Now, the leaders have ruled that families are not even allowed to come inside the camp under supervision.

One of the relatives waiting outside Camp Ashraf told Iran-Interlink’s representative in Baghdad, “up until now we didn’t want to make a fuss. We believed that if we avoided any publicity or confrontation, the MKO would co-operate out of humanity. Now we have stayed a week and they don’t let us visit so we will sit here until we find out what happened to our children. We demand that Iraqis do something to help us.”

The simple demand of these families is to know if their relatives inside Camp Ashraf are alive or dead, healthy or ill; in what state are they living if they are not allowed to visit their mothers or fathers.

Ultimately, the MKO leaders have no legal jurisdiction over Camp Ashraf or its residents. It is the Americans who still have 25 soldiers inside camp to protect them and the Government of Iraqi who are responsible to answer these families concerns. The families have begun meeting with human rights groups and journalists to explain their dilemma. With all the problems which Iraq faces, it is hoped that the Government will be able quickly to resolve this minor situation to the satisfaction of all the responsible parties.

February 22, 2010 0 comments

The Ideology of the MEK

MKO; Ideology Vs Ideology

An ideology is a set of aims and ideas that directs one’s goals, expectations, and actions. Many political parties base their political action on an ideology. In social studies, a political ideology is a certain ethical set of ideals, principles, doctrines, myths or symbols of a social movement, institution, class and or large group that explains how society should work, and offers some political and cultural blueprint for a certain social order.

There are two available types of ideology: open and closed. When a political party accepts and interprets and possibly adopts change it symbolizes an open ideology. When they represent a closed ideology, they do not accept any change. The majority of ideologies in the history were closed and consequently dangerous. For instance Stalin era stands for the crimes committed under the name of ideology.

Proud of their ideology and dedicated to their ideological revolutions, MEK (Mujahedin-e-Khalq ) leaders represent the most recent version of a criminal closed ideology believers who view their dissidents as victims who should be eliminated . They never see their opponents as a minority that they can tolerate or deal with moderately. Such an ideological system just archives a black list of criminal activities as its background.

A fanatical formalistic belief in their ideology has led MEK to a complicated classified system where no human being is allowed to build his world with his own dynamic analytic thought.

Instead of portraying saint figures for Masud and Maryam Rajavi and staying in some special fixed forms, MEK should respect common values like freedom, justice, honor, honesty, friendship and love … That’s what that can make an ideology universal.

As the MEK see the world from behind its own glasses made of some fixed configurations and formulations, they can never see the reality of the affairs from different aspects. This is what leads them to dogmatism. The absolute power of the Rajavis is the outcome of such a view in their cult-like organization.

The absolute power has made the Rajavis to grant an undemocratic right to themselves. They view themselves higher than everyone so they decide for others’ fate. They impose their monarchy on their followers and that is why their ideology ends with totalitarianism.

By Mazda Parsi

February 6, 2010 0 comments

Maryam Rajavi

Freedom according to Rajavi

Freedom is a term with a large definition but the most common definition is:

” the state of not being a prisoner or a slave.”

Freedom according to Rajavi Freedom can also be used in the expressions like “freedom of speech”,’ freedom of thought” … which clarify the power of right to act, speak or think as one wants without being stopped.

According to her recent interview with AFP ( Agence France Press),Maryam Rajavi has called for “ solidarity among all those who reject the rule of the supreme leader – the velayat-e-faqih ( clerical rule ) and who want to see freedom installed in Iran.”

Since her message reads, Maryam Rajavi claims that her final objective is installing freedom in Iran! The best criterion to judge the interests of a political leader is studying the background and past activities and achievements of that particular party or group.

Considering the 3 decade history of Mujahedin-e-Khalq Organization and the testimonies of hundreds of former member of the organization denounce the true nature of Maryam Rajavi’s destructive cult in which modern slavery is practiced and members are imprisoned in Camp Ashraf, Iraq or Camp Maryam, France. These facts about Maryam Rajavi and her terror cult clarify the contradiction between her claim for freedom and the real conditions ruling her cult.

The members of MKO are psychologically manipulated under the constant cult-like indoctrination techniques. They are physically captured in the camps of the group in Iraq and France. They are not allowed to leave the camps. They are totally controlled by their superior officials. The dissidents to the group’s policies are tortured psychologically or physically, according to defectors of the cult.

How can Mrs. Rajavi speak of installing freedom in Iran when she is not able to establish the least human right and freedom in her own organization as a sample society of Iranian nation?

What kind of freedom does she talk about while there isn’t any type of freedom (including freedom of speech, thought, and decision) in MKO cult? The members are not even free to live with, contact or call their families. They are not free to choose their own work schedule. Any aspect of their life is controlled by the cult. Is this the freedom Maryam Rajavi is thinking of bringing to Iran?

By Mazda Parsi

January 10, 2010 0 comments

Human Rights Abuse in the MEK

Fear and Slavery in the Mojahedin-e Khalq cult

Foreword

The families in Iraq announced on Friday 6th that they had finally been able to meet with their relatives, but were far from satisfied with the circumstances. They said that when the MKO PMOI leaders’ hysteria over eight family members knocking at the camp gate asking to see their relatives leaders discovered that they were coming to the camp accompanied by several Iraqi and American reporters, they accepted to negotiate. The MKO agreed that the families could meet with their relatives for a few hours on condition that they do not talk to the media. The families accepted and held meetings.

However the families also said that their loved ones told them not to pursue the issue any further and said they must cut all further contact with them otherwise they will come under severe pressure from the cult leaders.

The families have now decided to pursue the issue of the camp with the Human Rights Ministry of Iraq in private.

* * *
Fear and Slavery in the Mojahedin-e Khalq cult

For those still interested enough to follow the dwindling fortunes of the foreign terrorist cult, Mojahedin-e Khalq, isn’t there something faintly ludicrous in the group’s desperate denunciation of anyone and everyone who does not fall on their side of a red line, drawn excruciatingly tightly around the organisation and its backers, as “agents of the Iranian Intelligence Ministry”? Is it really a case of ‘us few against the rest of the world’?

An examination of the current crisis the MKO is facing reveals that it is not involved in a pitched battle to overthrow the Iranian regime – or has that aim been abandoned without them telling anyone – but the arrival at the doors of its camp in Iraq of eight elderly Iranian folk seeking contact with close relatives – sons, daughters, husbands –inside the camp, who they have not seen for many, many years and with whom they wish to meet. All eight have been denounced by the MKO leaders as “agents of the Iranian secret services” who have been deliberately sent to dismantle the camp and take its residents back to Iran.

Really?

These eight – and the other small groups and individuals who have arrived at the camp over the past six years – are terrifying agents capable of destroying Rajavi’s dedicated, self-sacrificing, totally committed force of Mojaheds? Surprising then that they have not come armed with dynamite and bulldozers, but instead come with kindness, warmth and words filled with both love and sorrow. They come with news and messages from family and friends, about births, deaths, marriages and all the little minutiae of ordinary life.

How interesting. How revealing. What a sad admission of the fragility and nihilism of the Rajavi cult that they are truly terrified by this.

Are we to believe that Iran’s “main opposition” – to quote its own self-publicity – which purports to be able to overthrow the Iranian regime in its entirety and establish a democracy in its place, is full of individuals terrified that their Mum or Dad will come along and pull their ear and make them go home? (And we must not forget that these are individuals with an average age of around 50 years.) Is it really that easy to turn a dedicated individual away from their struggle?

Isn’t the only rational interpretation of the MKO’s current hysteria that Massoud and Maryam Rajavi can only keep hold of their followers through deception and coercion and that the visit of these families will threaten to undermine that.

The fundamental, unavoidable fact behind all this is that the MKO is a dangerous, destructive mind control cult which holds its members in a state of modern slavery.

And the significance of this is far greater than the story of these eight families and involves the geopolitical future of Iraq and the region.

In brief, the MKO is described as a dangerous cult because it believes in using violence to achieve its stated aims. It is destructive because it destroys the lives, minds and spirits of its membership. The majority of the members are held incommunicado, with no access at all to the outside world. Within this isolation they are subjected to a systematic daily regime of psychological manipulation and coercion.

One of the most potent tools used by cult leaders to control their members is through the inculcation of irrational fears, or phobias, in the minds of cult members. Every cult has its own version of phobia. But all will be focused on creating an irrational fear in a cult member of critics and opponents of the cult, especially former members and family members; who of course are best placed to understand the cult mindset and be able to penetrate it. The member will become fearful anytime the phobia is activated. In the case of the MKO, the ‘code’ which activates the phobia is the tag ‘agent of the Iranian Intelligence Ministry’. No empirical evidence is required as the phrase works exactly to arouse irrational, not real, fear.

Members of the MKO live in a state of almost perpetual fear. It is through fear that the MKO not only enthrals its members but deceives uninformed politicians and media persons. The use of the word terror in this article is not for the sake of exaggeration. It describes the employment of irrational fears to ‘terrorise’ the subject. Western parliaments, media and humanitarian agencies are being ‘terrorised’ by a sophisticated campaign of psychological manipulation in which MKO lobbyists arouse a subtle level of irrational fear of spurious, deceptive spectres (usually these will be tagged ‘agents of the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence’) facing the “main Iranian opposition movement”, the MKO.

Ironically this unarmed ‘terrorist’ campaign is waged by the MKO to avoid exposure and activation of the real existential threat hanging over the group. This threat does not come from outside agencies, but arises directly from the cult nature of the organisation itself; hence the MKO leaders’ hysteria over eight family members knocking at the camp gate asking to see their relatives.

But, those still interested enough to keep on following the dwindling fortunes of the foreign terrorist cult Mojahedin-e Khalq, will already know that this is not the whole story. Not even the real story. And those who may squirm at seeing see the emperor’s nakedness should look away now.

For six years the American Army provided protection for the MKO in Iraq, a group which both the U.S. and Iraq designate as a foreign terrorist entity. The RAND National Defense Research Institute report ‘The Mujahedin-e Khalq in Iraq – A Policy Conundrum’ published in August 2009 describes the U.S.’ failure to deal decisively with the group; to dismantle it as should have happened, as successive Iraqi governments since December 2003 required should happen.

According to the report, “Approximately 14 U.S. soldiers were killed and 60 wounded as they provided security for convoys escorting MeK [MKO] members to Baghdad to purchase supplies.

Thus, it was often unclear just who was in charge of Camp Ashraf”. According to the report, the order to protect this useful little mercenary terrorist cult came from the very top, from former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Why?

Just as the MKO leaders denied families access to their relatives inside the camp, the firmly closed doors of the camp against this existential threat proved an extremely convenient location to reassemble members of the former Saddam Hussein’s regime. Over six years the MKO has played host to supporters and officials of the former Iraqi dictator’s regime. Insurgent violence in the Diyala province has been coordinated from the MKO camp under U.S. protection.

So, when eight family members arrive at the gates of the MKO camp, it is not only the MKO leaders who fear the existential threat to the cult, but the group’s western backers. For over two decades, the Mojahedin-e Khalq has been promoted by western interests as Saddam Hussein’s private army. Since 2003, the group’s Zionist and neoconservative backers, fronted by Lord Corbett in the U.K., Straun Stevenson and Alejo Vidal-Quadras in the European Parliament, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen in the U.S. Congress, and U.S. lobbyist Raymond Tanter, have not been supporting the MKO for humanitarian reasons (otherwise they would surely support these family visits). They are protecting and promoting the group as a proxy for reintroducing Saddamists into Iraqi politics.

Those terrorised into believing they support the MKO for humanitarian reasons to protect them from destruction by the Government of Iran need to summon a little energy and a little courage to look beyond this false, superficial reasoning and really examine the facts. In doing so they will be faced with a stark choice: support the MKO as a proxy for the re-emergence of pro-western Saddamists in Iraq, or support the elected Government of Iraq as an independent, sovereign government.

That is clearly a political choice. But in the meantime, remember, the real victims of the MKO’s terrorism are the cult’s own members who are enslaved by fear.

November 8, 2009 0 comments

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