Having a social base requires the support of the majority, and if there is no support, no base will be created. One of the claims of the Mojahedin Khalq Organization is that the majority of Iranians support them, and this is while the Iranian people clearly hate this group and have no interest in supporting them, that I will discuss the causes of this hatred in the following.
This group carried out many terrorist operations and in the early days of the revolution, many shopkeepers, students, etc. were assassinated for various reasons, such as attending mosques and installing pictures of Imam Khomeini or even having a beard.
After a while, these assassinations turned to a new face and took the form of bombings and mortar shells, which is why people call them terrorists.
The war between Iran and Iraq is one of the reasons why people hate MKO, and they attacked Iran on behalf of Saddam in Operation Forough Javidan, and that is why the people see them as a traitor.
Another reason why MKO doesn’t have a social status among the people is the suppression of the opposition and the destruction of the critics, who, due to the sectarian nature of this group, minimized the tools of opposition within the group and suppressed any protests within the organization with imprisonment, torture and physical purification (Assassinating). They insult the opponents and critics outside the organization and call them mercenaries and spies.
The policy of the Mojahedin-e Khalq group is called”with us or against us”and if anyone is other than these two, they insult and humiliate that person.
Hypocrisy in the behavior of MKO caused the people not to trust this group. They were ostensibly pro-Islamic and for this reason, they were able to enter Iran’s parliament during the revolution, but behind the scene, they sought to collect weapons to overthrow the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Contrary to the internal dictatorship of Maryam and Massoud Rajavi and their uncritical behavior towards external critics, they showed themselves to be pro-democracy, and the mismatch between the outward and inward behavior of MKO caused the Iranian people to call them hypocrites and distrustful.
One of the reasons for the increase in sanctions against Iran was the cooperation of MKO with the enemies of Iran, who made life difficult for the people by giving false information and spending a lot of money, and the harder the life of the people became, the more their hatred for MEK increased.
Even now, MEK is using violence as a practical tool to achieve their goals, and this is another reason why people do not support this group.
Some believe that the group is like a personality-oriented cult and that only the goals and aspirations of its leadership are important, and the claims of their members that this group is a people-based political movement, is completely false and untrue.
In her book”Chador in the Torn Heart of Iran”, Ms. Lili Gruber writes in an article entitled”Cyanide Tablet”that:
The Mojahedin lost the same small amount of trust and popularity among the Iranian people by launching a war between Iran and Iraq and betraying their country and people, unlike groups such as the Kurds and the Northern Alliance used by the United States in Iraq, the Mojahedin are severely isolated and have no support network to assist them in their sabotage operations.
Many party leaders agree that: the MEK is a cult, not a political party.
The noteworthy point is that MEK is not only unpopular among the Iranian people but in addition to spending a lot of money and working abroad, they also have no place among the opposition groups.
But the question that comes to mind is that given that the MEK does not have supporters inside and outside, then how do they bring a large crowd in their ceremonies? And for example, where did the population of three thousand people in Albania come from?
According to studies conducted in some reports, the MEK mentioned the numbers higher than what they really are, for example, in a conference, the number of participants was announced as 90,000, while the reporter who was present there, had estimated that the number of people was 9,000.
For example, in an interview with a Kyrgyz student, Alina Alimkova, Radio Farda, which is run by the US Congress, said that she came across an advertisement for a cheap trip to Paris on the Internet, which included a round-trip ticket, a week stay in a four-star hotel and … all for 35 euros, and by e-mail to the authorities, she realized that she had to take part in a political demonstration and chant Persian slogans to participate in this tour, and when she got on the bus, she realized that Many students are from Russia, the Czech Republic, Ukraine, and Central Asia.
In any case, they tricked the youth and students with every trick so that they could gather people for themselves, and if anyone refused to participate in these political demonstrations, that person would have to pay all the travel expenses.
As for the people living in Albania, most of them were recruited at the beginning of the revolution because of their good social positions, or they are the children of people who were born in Iraq and then sent to Europe to be brainwashed.
Some were taken captive during the Iran-Iraq war, and during Saddam’s visit, it was decided that some would join the MKO to escape the harsh conditions of the Iranian prisoner-of-war camps in Iraq.
The other part that was recruited came to Ashraf with false promises of work, residence, money, and so on.
Another point to note is that Ashraf keeps the identification documents of the people, including their passports and identification documents so that the people do not escape from the camp, and in case of escape, they are without identity.
In one of the memoirs of the members who left the organization, it is mentioned that “I handed over my documents and they put a notebook in front of me and told me to choose any name I wanted, and from now on I had to live in the camp with a fake name.”
BY David Brooks, Ahtribute