Elizabeth Rubin writes in the New York Times on the Mujahedeen e-Khalq (MEK) and their controversial claims as Iran’s main opposition group. According to Rubin, Secretary of State 
Hillary Clinton, “should ignore their [MEK] P.R. campaign. Mujahedeen Khalq is not only irrelevant to the cause of Iran’s democratic activists, but a totalitarian cult that will come back to haunt us.” Rubin argues that what is “most disturbing” about the MEK is the way the leaders, Massoud and Maryam Rajavi treats its members that reside in Iraq’s Camp Ashraf. Rubin visited Camp Ashraf in 2003 and after her visit, spoke with many men and women who had escaped MEK. According to her interviews with the former MEK members, ”many had to be deprogrammed. They recounted how people were locked up if they disagreed with the leadership or tried to escape; some were even killed.” Additionally, residents of Camp Ashraf are forbidden to engage in friendships and any other type of emotional relationships. Boys and girls are banned from speaking with one another and residents are also required to report their dreams and thoughts. Rubin also writes that members are forced to divorce and “take a vow of lifelong celibacy to ensure that all their neergy and love would be directed toward Maryam and Massoud.”
Trita Parsi and Dokhi Fassihian list steps in an article published in Tehran Bureau that the U.S., international community and MEK can take to resolve the situation at Camp Ashraf. Parsi and Fassihian recommend that Camp Ashraf should be dismantled from the supervision of the United Nations, the International Red Cross and the U.S. military. Additionally, the rights of the MEK members should be upheld. Residents should also “be offered resettlement in third countries and reunification with their families if they meet the requirement of the United Nations to renounce violence.” Most importantly, Parsi and Fassihian emphasize that the National Council for Iranian Resistance (NCRI)- MEK as a whole, should renounce violence in an official proclamation published in Farsi and English before being considered for FTO delisting.[..]
Project on middle East Democracy
objective is to get the Obama administration to remove the MEK from the list of foreign terrorist organizations. Wherever the money to fund the campaign is coming from, some of the largest expenditures so far have been in the form of fat speaking fees to notables who are willing to accept the check and come out in favor of delisting the group. Some of these high-profile hired advocates later acknowledged they did not have all that much knowledge about the MEK.
ThinkProgress the groups organizing the demonstration said at least two thousand people were there, though the estimate seemed high.
generated with its massive pay-for-speech campaign, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney praised the MEK and called for their delisting as part of a campaign of “provocative actions” against the Iranian government.
Nafee-Issa, said the Committee is working to collect signatures for the expulsion of the Mojahedin from the province of Diyala, and from Iraq. .jpg){kind=logo}
political spectrum and some paid tens of thousands of dollars in speaking fees, have joined a well-orchestrated lobbying campaign to remove a controversial Iranian exile group from the list of terrorist organizations maintained by the U.S. State Department.
remove the group from its list of foreign terrorist organizations. In a sophisticated display of its public relations ability, the demonstration featured scores of young supporters wearing matching yellow T-shirts and straw hats chanting slogans, live big-screen broadcasts of the speakers, appearances by well-know U.S. politicians and the release of white doves that flew up toward the State Department’s enormous navy-blue flag as a storm of yellow and blue confetti filled the air.