Rajavis and Cult Leadership

Women’s right around the world today is an important indicator in understanding a civilized country.  Many may think that women’s rights is only the issue in religious countries while it is actually a global issue.  However, the problem is improving across the world but there are still a lot of women who have to struggle to achieve it.  For instance, women who have been recruited by destructive cults such as the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (the MKO) are good examples of how women are being treated unfairly.  The cult of Rajavi (the MKO) which is governed by kind of modern slavery system deprives female members from their fundamental freedoms and rights.

Nevertheless, the MKO propaganda tries to demonstrate a modern democratic portrait of a viable alternative for the Iranian Government while in reality it practices discrimination and violence against its female members.  The new documentary published by Press TV proves just the opposite of what their propaganda claims. “Comrades in Arms” unfolds the story of those women who fell for deceptive slogans of the MKO. Looking for a brighter future these women ended up in Camp Ashraf, where they faced a gloomy fate.

The testimonies of three interviewed women who are interviewed in the documentary severely challenge very special page on Maryam Rajavi’s website where its Gobbles propaganda issues a long statement titled “Women’s Freedoms and Equality in Tomorrow’s Iran”. Criticizing the Constitution of the Islamic Republic for violation of women rights.

“Fundamental freedoms and rights” numbered on this page of the MKO site, one after the other, ironically recalls you the testimonies of Batoul Soltani, Zahra Moini and Nasrin Ebrahimi, former members of the Cult of Rajavi in Press TV documentary.

According to the so-called program that Maryam Rajavi has planned for the future of women in Iran  Women shall have the equal right to enjoy all human rights and fundamental freedoms’’. In contrast, about the situation of women in the MKO, Batoul Soltani says, “What I saw in this organization was that women were merely tools in every level I witnessed.” Zahra Moini whose arm was wounded in the group’s blind military operation against Iran, Eternal Light, says, “This was his old slogan that women were open to exploitation but we were exploited most in the organization.”

What do you think of this article of the so-called statement in support of women?

“Women are free to choose their place of residence, occupation, and education. They must have the opportunity to travel freely, have the right to freely choose their clothing and spouse, and have the right to leave the country, to obtain foreign citizenship, to devolve citizenship to their children, to divorce, and to obtain custody and guardianship over children.”

The paragraph seems pretty nice! If you are not well informed about the true nature of the MKO you may imagine such a democratic progressive humanitarian political movement exist in this group but the testimonies of the a few number of a large group of women held as hostages in the MKO camps indicates the extremely abusive condition of members in the Cult of Rajavi, particularly female ones. “As for Camp Ashraf, it’s very painful to talk about it. It’s like to be in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp for years and experience the sufferings and then talk about it,” Nasrin describes the horrible camp Ashraf.

“Everything was obligatory there: organizational obligations, organizational dos and don’ts, organizational rules, and relations that would become tense and tenser every minute”, says Batoul.

Based on the defectors’ testimonies and numerous international reports including NO EXIT report of the Human Rights Watch, violation of individual rights in the MKO ranges from mandatory marriage and divorce to solitary confinement and torture that in some cases ended up in death. So what about this dimension of Maryam Rajavi’s ideal world for women:  “Women must have free and equal right to choose, marry or divorce a spouse. They must have the opportunity to travel freely, have the right to freely choose their clothing and spouse, and have the right to leave the country, to obtain foreign citizenship, to devolve citizenship to their children, to divorce, and to obtain custody and guardianship over children”?

You may find the sarcastic answer in Batoul words: “And what we witnessed from the beginning – though my marriage conformed to social norms and was not an organizational marriage – I encountered women who were devoid of emotional involvement with their husbands but the organization had made them marry. For the first time, I saw compulsory marriages in the organization. It’s very difficult to love someone by force. I think that it’s very difficult for a woman to do so.”

“It was a very difficult process for me as it was a mental torture for me.” She adds.” I was with a group of people who kept talking about divorce and hate children and mutual life. It was not accepted for them to have children. It was a sin for the people I was with to sleep with their spouses.”

But the most ridiculous part of the statement seems to be this one: “Polygamy is prohibited”!

Nasrin speaks of very long meetings where Maryam Rajavi tried to manipulate female members to consider Massoud as their only one husband. Maryam told them: “We women all have only one husband who is Masoud Rajavi. You have the most handsome and the best man in the world.  So what’s wrong with you?”

Batoul was one of the members of the group’s Elite Council. She was one of those chosen women who were indoctrinated to marry Massuod. “One day a ceremony was held – it was the wedding ceremony – in which Masoud Rajavi performed the marriage ceremony and the women stood up one by one saying, “Yes”, she recounts.

Female survivors of the MKO destructive cult reveal facts about dancing sessions in which women were encouraged to dance in front of Massoud “uniting with him” according to Maryam Rajavi’s claim, although they were severely forbidden to talk or even look at male members in the camp. 

Read Btoul’s firsthand account of what happens in the inner side of the MKO filthy relations.

“I suddenly realized that the senior members of the leadership council began to take their dresses off. When about 25 senior members of the leadership council began to take off their dresses and stripped naked other women who were of my rank followed suit and Maryam Rajavi and others were encouraging, “This is your pool. You should dive into it. Come on! Get undressed in front of the leader.” The meeting went on this way; for about three to four hours they were dancing. Masoud, though at first pretended to be discontent over our presence there, sat comfortably eyeing up us all.”*

Nasrin is definitely right to feel sick when she hears the phrase “pure Mujahedins’ relations”. “There are no pure relations in the organization,” she says. “I haven’t seen relations so filthy as in the organization than in everywhere else.”

In Camp Parsian Batoul was selected by Maryam to sleep with Massoud. She describes the first night to sleep with the cult leader how her mind was obsessed with contradictory thoughts about her beloved leader and his organization:

“When Maryam Rajavi called me to see Masoud at night it didn’t mean that I was in love with Masoud waiting with bated breath to see him or that I had an overwhelming urge since I had no husband. No, that was not the case. The only reason was that I couldn’t stand up against the organization when I was there. I knew that if I had fought them they would have done away with me. I couldn’t fight with them. I thought, “If I say no to them, what would happen next? Would they leave me alone? No. and this is not a subject to be discussed in the leadership council.” Then it would come to my mind that such and such a member of the leadership council who had disappeared mysteriously might have been killed or whatever. Later on, I had no doubt that they would kill anyone who disagrees with them in the leadership council. So I decided to let him do whatever he wanted waiting for a moment to save my body.”

She lists names of several women who were mysteriously disappeared in the organization. Later she found out that she was not the only one to sleep with Massoud. That was then she could see Rajavi’s true colors. ”I wondered why marriage and sexual satisfaction was banned for all men while he exempted himself,” Batoul says.

The entire documentary rejects this passage of Maryam’s plan for prosperity of Iranian women: “Any exploitation of women under any pretext is prohibited. All traditions, laws and regulations according to which the parents, a guardian or anyone else put girls or women at the disposal of others on the pretext of marriage or any other pretext for sexual gratification or exploitation will be repealed”

Together with her friends, Nasrin is now dedicated to reveal the true substance of the MKO Cult. She notes: “They appear good, happy and beautiful in public but they are rotten to the core. Only we who were there know their real characters and therefore hate their appearances. It makes us sick when Maryam Rajavi delivers a speech. It taxes our patience to listen to her speech word by words because we know that she’s lying through her teeth. It makes us puke when she talks about women.”

Mazda Parsi

* Comrades in Arms