According to the news websites covering the situation of defectors of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (the MKO/ MEK/ PMOI/ the Cult of Rajavi), the UN High Commissioner of Refugees paid the first monthly contribution to defectors in Albania last Friday February 9th, 2018. The new improvement in implementing laws by the UNHCR considering the defectors of the MKO as independent refugees seems to be a good move.
Since the MKO relocation process to Albania was completed in September 2016 until last Friday, the group leaders have been able to manipulate the UNHCR in executing the international laws about MKO members convincing the UNHCR authorities to allocate the individuals’ monthly payments as a whole to the organization’s leaders.
This rule malfunction helped the MKO leaders confiscate the members’ money and eventually use it as a pressure tool to ban them from leaving their group. Over three hundred people who managed to leave the MKO after the relocation in Albania faced a great deal of problems once they dissociated themselves from the group. They were left homeless and moneyless in the society. They were aided by charities and humanitarian communities. Read the stories of some of the defectors here.
The right to be informed
By officially receiving their first payment, MKO defectors will be able to lead a rather normal life in the free world. Therefore, those who are still taken as hostages in the MKO bases in Albania should be aware of the new regulations in the system of payments of the UNHCR. Particularly, those who are kept in the newly-rented Camp Ashraf 3 in a remote location outside Tirana –more isolated and lonely than the time they were located in Tirana—should be informed about their basic rights. They should be learned that their defection from the cult-like MKO does not result in homelessness and poverty.
This is the crucial responsibility of the UNHCR and the Albanian government to make sure that individuals who are in the Ashraf 3 are not intimidated by the hardship of leaving the Cult of Rajavi.
By Mazda Parsi
