Gholam Mirzai is in his fifties. He defected the Mujahedin Khalq in Albania, three years ago and he returned to his home town a year later. Gholam writes about his experiences of living in the cult-like structure of the group for Nejat society website. His recent piece published on the Persian page of the website points out certain cases of Mujahed mothers whose kids were separated from them under the order of Massoud Rajavi.
Gholamali Mirzaei
Gholam Mirzai was recruited by the MEK recruiters after he was imprisoned in Iraqi jail for ten years. The recruitment of Iranian POW’s by the MEK was part of the alliance between Saddam Hussein and Massoud Rajavi.
Gholam was stuck in the MEK’s notorious regulations for 30 years and thus he witnessed a large number of cases of human rights violation in the MEK’s camps. Here, he particularly recounts a memoir of Massoud Rajavi’s plot to separate children from their parents during the first Gulf War.
About nine hundred children were smuggled from Iraq to Jordan and then to different European countries. The German Zeit Magazine has recently covered a detailed story of one of these children, Amin Golmaryami. However, Gholam Mirzai recounts the other side of these stories: mothers.
“When I was in the MEK in 1991, every day I witnessed three women weeping tears for their beloved children, in a corner of Camp Hanif, the operational garrison of the MEK.” Gholam writes. “Shahin was from Khuzestan. Her husband Mohammad Taqi Saket was a fellow citizen of mine. Together with two other women, Masoomeh and Azam we served as service workers there. Their children had been separated from them and transferred to Europe.”
“At that night, before the end of the work time, I saw them crying again,” Gholam continues. “I started talking to them.” Shahin breaks the rules of the Cult of Rajavi that bans members from talking about their personal affairs. She opens up to Gholam recalling her last visit with her little girl. “They took me to Baghdad to meet my daughter for the last time,” she told Gholam. “She was crying while they took her from me and sent her to get on the bus. I feel so sad and I am always worried about her.”
This was the start of a long-life grief for most female members of the MEK. Since then, Mujahed mothers have been trained by the cult leaders to suppress their emotions for their children. They actually made them avoid feelings for their family and specially their children but this has not always worked for the leaders. Some mothers like Mitra Yusefi and Fereshteh Hedayati could manage to release themselves from the bars of the cult but there are still hundreds of mothers who devoted their love to the guru of the cult, Massoud Rajavi instead of their children.
By Mazda Parsi