The Humanitarian Cause Remaining Unsolved
Mojahedin Khalq is de-listed but the fate of its members as the victims continue to remain unsolved
In its November 2012 edition, Afrique Asie wrote; “The State Department bowed to the judicial 
court ruling obligating it to a revisal of the PMOI designation. It was a historic victory for the Iranian Resistance at the end of a legal and political journey in Europe and then the US, with many ups and downs. Justice provided a positive answer everywhere to the PMOI’s demands”. It appears there are still agencies misinformed as to the true cause of a terrorist group’s removal from the list. The real story is in direct contradiction to the group’s diffusion of disinformation propaganda.
A US appeals court had ordered Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to decide within four months by October 1, whether to remove the designated terrorist Mojahedin Khalq Organization MKO/MEK/PMOI from the US FTO’s blacklist. Ambassador Daniel Benjamin, coordinator for counter-terrorism, had told reporters earlier in a conference that the group had misunderstood a recent court order that required the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to decide whether to remove the MEK from the terror list. According to the judges’ order, the Secretary of State had to make her decision by October 1 to keep the group on the list or remove it, but the order “did not mandate any particular result.”
The decision, however, was taken on the ground of a humanitarian move and MKO appears to have totally forgotten that in the process of its years-long lobbying efforts almost majority of the American former officials on the group’s payroll urged for removal of the group for the humanitarian cause of the people of Camp Ashraf and then Camp Liberty as a top agenda to facilitate their resettlement in third countries as soon as possible. Michael Mukasey, the former Attorney General, speaking in a Washington meeting arranged to urge delisting of MKO stated:
“The point of this move, of course, is to make it easier for the residents to be relocated outside Iraq. That’s the goal, as we all know. And that goal cannot be achieved so long as the State Department continues to make the United States the only country in the civilized world to designate the MeK as a terrorist organization. … it’s time to end this. The continued listing of MeK is the main obstacle to resettlement… .”
In a message sent by General James Jones to the same Washington Symposium, he stressed that “The right thing to do, the humanitarian thing to do, is for the United States to remove the terrorist listing currently ascribed to the people of Camp Ashraf and Camp Liberty, and to champion a program of third country repatriation as soon as possible”.
Or when Dennis Hastert, another former Congressman, tried to make a logical argument for delisting MKO at the same meeting, he said:
“But when there’s liberty and life of human beings at stake we have to make that the exceptional focus on what is their well-being and what is the right thing to do. And to try to sacrifice a group of people’s well-being, their life, their ability to have a decent life, a humanitarian existence, should not be stopped by some political considerations in trying to massage a political or diplomatic situation.”
And MKO was removed from the list. But did it change the fate of Ashraf and Liberty’s residents to be sent and resettled in other countries? Absolutely not. The residents are now placed in a humanitarian plight that can be condemned as inhumane and practiced only in cultic settlements. And of course, the brag and show of those meetings in which American advocates lauded delisting of MKO as initiative to end the agony of its members has come an end; their mission is fulfilled, the cashes paid, and they have no obligation to feel any sense of responsibility towards these enslaved people.
Maybe these officials are also amazed to see that how MKO has managed to promote a humanitarian cause overnight to be demonstrated a historic victory for its propaganda machine and the humanitarian move of the State Department as a bow to its demands. They were paid their share in a massive campaign to abuse human rights for unjust political causes. However, it is not all the story. Sometimes it is the US that decides which group is terrorist depending on how that group suits national and political interests. And of course, the only thing nobody cares about is the fate, agony and plights of who under the pretext of human rights issues continue to be abused and remain the real victims.
