I am responding to your recent speeches in the European Parliament in relation to Iran in which you express support for the Mojahedin-e Khalq organization led by Massoud Rajavi. As a former member, I have known this group since 1979. Because of them I spent five years of my youth in
I was sent to Camp Ashraf after several years of fundraising work for the MKO in Canada. I was originally sent for a six month military training stint, but in fact they never allowed me to leave. (As you know, none of the people at Camp Ashraf have any legal status in Iraq and their passports and personal documents are confiscated by the MKO leadership to prevent them leaving. Ref. RAND report.)
After considering your support for this military cult, I just want to ask you, and give you the benefit of the doubt, if you honestly and purely, as the freedom lover you make claim to be, believe in your own use of the term ‘democratic’ in relation to the MKO. How do you know that? By visiting Camp Ashraf?
I should remind you and your colleagues that these are visits carefully pre-arranged and organized by the MKO leadership. Where did you go while you were at Camp Ashraf, to whom did you speak? I was there while so many people like yourself and like Paulo Casaca visited. We saw by whom you were escorted and of course we were not allowed to approach you and talk to you. All those people around you were MKO intelligence and security personnel, the same people who are responsible for the suppression and mistreatment of rank and file members.
Did it ever occur to you that everybody you were introduced to and allowed to speak with was saying exactly the same things like a broken record. Maybe you didn’t think of this because when it comes to it the MKO are expert at manipulating and deceiving people with their red carpet treatment and their provision of gifts like Perisan rugs and fancy goods.
In your speech you used the words ‘pressure’ and ‘harrasment’. Do you have any idea what your Rajavi has done to us? The beatings, humiliation, swearing and constant mental pressure aimed at anyone who wants to leave, or even to say anything critical of what Rajavi has ever said. Where you then? Why has no one asked any international human rights organization to come and visit Ashraf independently?
Many tragedies have taken place within the confines of Camp Ashraf. But no more, not for the rank and file members like myself. On the contrary, with the takeover by the Government of Iraq in January 2009, and the recent publication of the RAND report, they see some light at the end of the tunnel at last.
But as for Rajavi and his high rank killing machine, of course you said that you recently visited Camp Ashraf and that such allegations are absolutely unfounded. Are you a man of your word? Are you prepared to return to Camp Ashraf with a different, non-MKO organized delegation to see if you are right or not? I make only one suggestion; that I be permitted to come along with that delegation and show you the real Camp Ashraf and take you to places so that you could freely talk to the rank and file members. What do you say about that? Since your speech is presumably not political and is purely humanitarian, so you should not have any objection to this suggestion. In fact, I am sure you will be happy to prove your words, especially as you think that everybody in Camp Ashraf is there voluntarily.
In the end however I have so many things to say and explain to you and your colleagues. But for now I just wanted to ask how you can be so sure of what you say? How many former members, or even ordinary Iranians have you spoken to before you came to your conclusions? I myself am ready to come and talk about freedom and democracy and voluntary action and anything else that you and your colleagues want to discuss.
Don’t you think for one moment how strange it is that everyone who backs the MKO repeats exactly and precisely what Rajavi himself says? But that when it comes to listening to what former members say both MKO backers and leaders alike scream their hearts out that they are all agents of the Iranian Intelligence ministry?
Why is that? Could it be that Rajavi doesn’t want people like yourself – western, liberal, democratic, freely elected representatives – to talk to people like me?
Rajavi knows that if you talk to us you will have to think twice before you repeat whatever they want you to.
If you are truly a freedom lover, I think it’s only fair, not for me, or even for the Iranian people, but first for yourself to take these steps. Because I believe that if you are a humanitarian person then one day, maybe not long from now, as events unfold, you will see the truth and you will think back to this day and wish that you had taken a different stand. I just want you and other purely humanitarian people to remember that, along with my fellow brothers and sisters, victims of the Rajavi cult, I would remind you that little streams will, at last, join the ocean.
Reza Sadeghi, Paris