A Lobbyist or a Messenger to Mankind

The predicament of residents at temporary location shouldn’t be tied to MKO’s terrorist tag

I always wondered how the survivor of a human tragedy could be abused for the justification of another human tragedy just taking place before the eyes of the world. Just last year on April 27, Elie Wiesel, a survivor of Hitler’s death camp at Buchenwald, was invited to make a speech at a conference in Paris organized by Mojahedin Khalq Organization ,MKO to denounce a tragic event at Camp Ashraf. In fact, the Ashraf residents had the strict order to provoke bloody attacks since the group needed fresh blood and a few martyrs and wounded people to feed its new round of propaganda against the Iraqi government to maintain the blanket of secrecy surrounding the camp. The provoked attack, however, resulted in thirty-six death and tens more were wounded.

As reported by Washington Times, Mr. Wiesel once more spoke at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum last month. There he illustrated a new profile of himself that besides being a “messenger to mankind” was also on the list of some other American colleagues lobbying for the removal of MKO from the State Department’s list of FTO. In his speech he said: “The thing to do now when it comes to Ashraf and Liberty camp residents in Iraq is simple: Remove the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK) from the U.S. State Department’s list of terrorist organizations. It just takes some principle and spine”.

Mr. Weisel is quoted he had vowed that whenever a human being is persecuted, “I shall not be silent.” But he claims he didn’t know about Ashraf until shortly before the attack, as he asked at the conference, “Why didn’t the world know?” it is our question as well. Why didn’t the world know about hundreds of people enslaved against their will within the bastion of a terrorist cult in the middle of a wasteland in Iraq? And now that you and the world have come to know, why nobody feels a responsibility to help them regain their freedom?

The predicament of residents at Ashraf and temporary location, as they call it Liberty camp, has nothing to do with the removal of their group from a terrorist list. It is not the question of an organization, it is a humanitarian issue. The problem of the members relocated to temporary location has to be dealt with regardless of the group’s entity. The problem is not MKO’s terrorist tag; to remind, it has already been removed from the EU terrorist list but still none of the EU member countries has accepted to receive the residents as the refugees.

And Mr. Weisel has a great responsibility as a “messenger to mankind” to fulfill as he has already vowed that “I shall not be silent.” We deeply believe that he and the world shall not remain silent. Instead of working all your lobbying power to delist a terrorist entity, become the voice of suffering souls crying for freedom, to convince the world to have open arms for them. Nearly half of the Ashraf dissidents have been transferred to temporary location near Baghdad, but none has been relocated since no third country has yet consented to take them as refugees.

By M. Nelson