Nelson Mandela’s legacy is nobody’s exclusive property. The legacy of non-violence and forgiveness of 
the anti-apartheid South African President lives on in the hearts of all freedom loving human beings who desire to make a difference in the world of injustice and discrimination. His legacy is in no way living on in the cult-like terrorist Mujahedin Khalq Organization –even though the group’s leader Maryam Rajavi makes efforts to take the gesture of a freedom loving democratic charismatic leader.
This is Mayam Rajavi’s twit following the passing away of the honorable Mandela: My respects to Nelson Mandela who said: I am prepared to die for a free society with equal opportunities. She offers condolences to "people of South Africa who strive for freedom".
As an exiled opposition leader, Rajavi has always enjoyed a much better condition –tied with the interests of foreign countries that provided her with financial and military support– than a opposition leader at home like Nelson Mandela –who served 27 years in prison for his aspirations for freedom and equality. For leaders like Mandela, the task was to move people, to win the hearts of people, and to ultimately isolate the hard opposition. How about the MKO? To what extent did they win the hearts of the Iranian people?
As an Iranian living in Iran, I eyewitness that the people here hardly ever remember the MKO, even those who remember them, do not claim any significant support for them because of their horrific terrorist acts against the Iranian civilians and officials. This true fact is confirmed in many international documents and articles. Being embraced by more and more people in society Nelson Mandela enjoys a relevant advantage that Maryam Rajavi has never enjoyed.
In his struggle against racism and discrimination, Mandela viewed Palestine with the same charitable ideas he had for the people of his own country. Nelson Mandela expressed his solidarity with the Palestinian struggle in simple but compelling terms. In a letter to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman in 2010, the former South African president wrote, “The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is not just an issue of military occupation and Israel is not a country that was established ‘normally’ and happened to occupy another country in 1967. Palestinians are not struggling for a ‘state’ but for freedom, liberation and equality, just like we were struggling for freedom in South Africa.”
Allied with Israel, today the MKO-run websites and officials do not even cover the news of the Palestinian sufferings. Serving their new sponsor the Israeli Mossad, the group is not going to risk its survival by advocating the Palestinians’ desire for freedom.
Today, Desmond Tutu the Archbishop of South Africa actively supports Palestinians. In the article he wrote in the Guardian in 2002 he expresses the deep pain he feels seeing the apartheid in the Holy Land. "I’ve been very deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land; it reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa" he writes. "I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about."
The ironic point is that today Desmond Tutu’s Daughter Naomi Nontombi Tutu is seen among supporters of the MKO. Seemingly the MKO’s skilled manipulative propaganda system succeeded to gain the support of such a person by wearing the mask of Mandela loving. In the early December Naomi Tutu attended an event organized by the MKO in Paris where she visited Maryam Rajavi taking photos in front of a large image of Nelson Mandela –put there in his so-called memory . In this way the MKO is trying to link itself with Nelson Mandela. However, as Iran- Interlink puts, "Several writers have pointed out that until only a few weeks ago the MEK was vehement in its rants against Mandela, and contrast this with the sudden change of tune after his death." The MKO previously attacked him for visiting Iran including a visit with the then President Khatami.
The Noble Peace Prize winner, Nelson Mandela and his admirable history has nothing to do with the MKO cult of personality that deprives its own members of their most basic human rights. In a deep contrast with Mandela, when in June 2003 Mryam Rajavi was arrested and jailed by the French Police only for a few days the Cult officials ordered sympathizers and members to set themselves on fire in European capitals. The outcome was the death of two women and the paralyzing of others.
Mandela wanted the popular culture to embrace him but the MKO’s attitude during the three past decades has definitely made the popular culture detest them.
By Mazda Parsi
