Once the relocation of members of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (the MKO, MEK, PMOI, the Cult of Rajavi) from Camp Liberty Iraq, to Tirana Albania, started in 2013, members of the group were supposed to be recognized as refugees and Albania was supposed to be their permanent home before their final relocation in third countries.
Six years passed and about a thousand members left the MKO to live a normal life in the free world but their departure from the group resulted in legal problems for them. It seems that they are recognized as “refugees” only if they are members of the Cult of Rajavi.
In June 2013 when the first group of the MKO members were resettled in Albaniab, the US State Department stated, “The permanent relocation of residents is essential to ensure the safety and security of residents.” However, today those residents who are no more followers of Maryam Rajavi are left homeless and money less because the UN’s Refugee and Migrant Service in Albania (RAMSA) closed its office in Tirana.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees allegedly relocated the MKO in Albania from Iraq on “humanitarian grounds.” “But, on their arrival they were not granted UN refugee status, nor have they been issued Albanian identity documents that would allow them to work or travel,” Ann and Massoud Khodabandeh wrote in Lobelog. “Lack of residency rights also means that they cannot register for a bank account. They have no identity papers whatsoever, except the flimsy piece of paper used to fly them through international airspace from Baghdad to Tirana.”
This means that the MKO defectors’ legal case is neither supervised by the UNHCR nor by the Albanian government. There is no perspective for them for moving to a third country and this is very pleasing for the MKO leaders. The UNHCR, the US and the Albanian government “humanitarian” aids are limited to the isolated barred members in the Cult of Rajavi.
The closure of RAMSA is a gift to the MKO leaders who fear the increasing defection from the group which ends in the collapse of their cult.
Mazda Parsi