Sattar Orangi

The propaganda machine of MKO never ceases to advertize the expressed concerns of its European advocates over the situation of human rights in Iran and especially its members in Camp Ashraf, in Iraq. It seems that these advocates are totally unaware of the fact that the group they are backing was formed as an armed opposition and which is long despised by Iranians and expelled because of its many bloody, brutal terrorist activities against Iranian authorities and civilians. Or the reports that it has been designated a terrorist group since 1997 by the US as well as being, a few years later, recognized a cult of personality for its cultic practices like committing self-immolations and systematic application of brainwashing techniques as well as subjecting members to intense physical and psychological pressures.

Regardless of all this truth, I want to take the opportunity to tell them that we are also concerned about the members not living but enslaved and held in Camp Ashraf against their own will. If they cannot, we can see how the organization is exploiting them as human shields to safeguard its own entity rather than being the least concerned about the members themselves. No member has ever been forced to return to Iran, though a number have already returned and are now safely living with their families. They can be sent to any country that accepts them but it is the organization’s strict cultic rules and pressures that has so far impeded the process of releasing the members from the bonds of the cult. The most authentic sources are the detached members of the organization whose views are released regularly through a number of their personally run-websites and whom are labeled by the organization with many names.

Anybody who claims to be a defender of human rights, oppressed people and women in particular should have the issue of Camp Ashraf on his conscience, not in the way the organization wants it but rather as a real issue of humanity and to put an end to their sufferings and exploitations. Considering that a remarkable number of the victimized members held in Camp Ashraf are women who have long been abused as sexual slaves, instruments to advance the cult and group’s objectives, and in general, servitudes of a masculine hegemony. The predicament of these insiders, who under the hollow slogans of being the pioneers and heroines of freedom and democracy suffer crushing physical and psychological pressures, is even worse than those enslaved in the outside world. They are under severe physical and psychological cult bounds of the organization and deprived of free will, thought, and as we have recently witnessed, forced onto the frontline of defenders of Ashraf to confront the entrance of the Iraqi police into the camp.

Many of them mothers and wives now detached from their families and each running a life in isolation because of the strict cultic regulations, they are all victims of most inhuman practices carried out within the MKO terrorist cut. For the outsiders it is hard to believe, as they might have read it in the books or seen on the screens, that just in a real piece of land in a neighbor or far country a terrorist cult is misusing modern science against women, that is, to make them infertile. Publically admitted by Batoul Soltani, an experienced rank of the organization’s leadership council who managed to escape the cult:

“The women members who have dedicated their family life, children and husbands to the cult leaders are totally separated from the outside world by the removal of their womb. In the organization, the hysterectomy surgery is considered as reaching the peak.” (Presstv)

In two phases, at least to mention, women suffered under the extreme exploitation exercised by MKO. In the first phase, on pretext of removing obstacles for the advancement of the struggle, the leaders ordered compulsory inter-organizational marriages. These marriages didn’t take place according to the members’ tastes or ages. This was closely related with rising and degrees of merit. The couples thus married were forbidden to have children and their conjugal duties and meetings were under strict control. In fact, the marriage was an ideological practice; the couples were the property of the organization and their marriage had to be channeled for the advancement of organizational ends rather than to secure familial and emotional relations. The target was not love, emotion, sexual pleasure or continuation of the generations but the control of the forces and maintenance of the organization. Women were utilized as the objects of controlling the male insiders and motivating them onward.

The second phase began with the ideological divorces after MKO’s failure in the military operation called Eternal Light. To justify the failure, Massoud Rajavi in 1991 completed his philosophy of ideological revolution by the decree of ideological divorcing. He gave the command of general divorcing of all married members. Thereafter, women, suffering grave humiliation, had to succumb to the wills of the leaders. In 2003, the world was shocked to see members of MKO setting themselves on fire to protest Maryam Rajavi’s arrest by French police. Two women members, Marzieh Babakhani and Neda Hassani, died of the injuries. They had the order to sacrifice themselves for the leader.

Many of women members are crushed under heavy physical and psychological pressures at the present. They suffer humiliation by regular confessions of the sins they have never committed before other members and have to write and report about their dreams and fancies. Where in the world women are treated as they are? Confined within the walls of a heavily guarded military camp in Iraq, these women are susceptible to any form of assault and harassment and we think the Iraqi government has taken a sound and wise decision to close Camp Ashraf at least because all enslaved insiders, and particularly women, will possibly achieve the freedom they never dream.

It is a duty on all humanitarian, international bodies and defenders of human rights to seek eliminate violence against the members of MKO, a proven case of exploitation and violence that lies before their eyes. If they are determined, they can easily hear the help cries of these men and women who do not wish for much; they want to live like other free people in the world as it is their right and any move that may hinder the process is criticized as siding with the cult leaders whose false, pro-democratic visage has duped many so far.