On the occasion of Mother’s Day in Iran, the mothers of elderly members of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) are longing to see their loved ones in person or even make a phone call, bearing the pain of years of separation. And the middle-aged mothers of the MEK within the walls of the group’s camp are bearing the pain of denying their maternal instinct and being away from their children. The cause of these two great sufferings is the cult of personality of Massoud Rajavi.
The first group, namely mothers who have been deprived of contact with their children for an average of three decades, have been full of maternal love all these years trying to get the slightest news from their imprisoned children. They have taken their complaint to international forums and have tried to make their voices heard by justice seekers through various means.
Mothers like Soraya Abdollahi, who are symbols of maternal love and resistance to the Rajavis’ blatant oppression, stand against the various vindictive labels the MEK puts on them and insist on their fundamental right to contact their beloved children.
On the other hand, their children are under pressure from the cult-like dictatorship of the group leaders to forget their family, to consider their family as enemies, and even to consider their mothers –who cry out with tearful eyes to see them– as mercenaries. These Children were even brought in front of the group’s TV cameras to curse their mothers.
The second group are mothers who are now in the group and whose children live in different parts of the world. In this group, there are mothers whose children are also in the MEK’s headquarters but there is no mother-child relationship between them. These children were child soldiers who were smuggled from Iraq to Europe and North America, and then smuggled back to the MEK’s headquarters in Iraq as teenagers. These mothers and their MEK children have no contact with each other except for one or two official visits a year.
After forced divorces, Mujahed mothers were forced to hand over their children to the smugglers of the MEK. Many of them are unaware of the fate of their children after long years of separation. Some have also been faced with their children’s revelations about the Cult of Rajavi. On the order of the group leaders, they have denied any maternal affection for their children. Amir Yaghmai and Mohammad Reza Torabi are among the child soldiers whose mothers have denied them in the group’s media and labeled them as mercenaries of the Iranian government!
The MEK, headed by Massoud Rajavi, is the defining line between being a mother and not being a mother. Today, if any MEK member leaves Camp Ashraf 3, they are welcomed with enthusiasm by their mothers, but each of the child soldiers who have left the group and whose mothers are still trapped in it, have been so much disliked by the side of their mothers that they could accept that there is no maternal love from them.
Mazda Parsi
