Self-immolation is systematic self-harm that prepares individuals in an organization to threaten or intimidate public opinion or even the members themselves.
in 2003, there were approximately 10 self-immolations in protest of Maryam Rajavi’s arrest in Paris. The MeK has also used the threat of immolation as a negotiating tool with the JIATF, with British investigators, and with France.
Mujahedin Khalq as a Destructive Cult
“MEK glorify my brother just after his death”, Hossein Davaji Hajili said about his brother Emamverdi.
Emamverdi whose nickname in the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO/ MEK/ Cult of Rajavi) was “Emad” died on June 26th 2021 after 32 years of imprisonment in the MEK.
The MEK website announced the news of Emamverdi’s death calling him the Honest Mujahed. “His father made him know Mujahedin Khalq when he was 12 years old,” MEK propaganda website claimed. “…he joined the MEK whole heartedly when he was in Iraqi prisons as a soldier.”
![Emamverdi (Emad) Davaji](https://www.nejatngo.org/sq/wp-content/uploads/blank.gif)
Emamverdi (Emad) Davaji
Hossein Davaji, heartbroken by the death of his brother after 35 years of separation told Nejat Society that his brother was only five when their father died. He clarified that their father was not a literate person and had no idea about the MEK as well as his brother Emamverdi (Emad).
“Defectors of MEK like Raufian and Roozrokh had told me that my brother was very sick, he had a heart disease and was forced to do hard labors in the MEK’s camps,” Hossein said.
Emamverdi was a soldier and only 21 when he was imprisoned by Iraqi forces. He was then recruited by MEK agents in Iraqi prison. Actually, he fled the horrible situation of Saddam’s prison but he fell in the trap of the Cult of Rajavi for 32 years.
last week, another propaganda show was launched by the Mujahedin Khalq (MKO/ MEK/ PMOI/ Cult of Rajavi) in their headquarters called Camp Ashraf 3 in Albania. It is considered a propaganda show because it was organized under the cultic system that Massoud Rajavi has built around his own personality. The show was magnified by huge screens before the dazed faces of uniformed MEK members who automatically clapped their hands or raised their fists to chant slogans to adore their smiling guru, Maryam Rajavi.
Based on numerous records, MEK is considered a cult-like group. “The MEK’s cultic system means that decisions are imposed from the top down,” assert Masoud and Ann Khodabandeh, former members of the group. “This means that those decisions are only as intelligent as the leadership.” [1]
In July 2018, Saeed Kamali Dehghan of the Guardian published an article to discuss the support of US warmongers such as John Bolton for MEK, “the extreme Iranian opposition group who was the target of a foiled bombing attack in France and was once a sworn enemy of the United States”. Reviewing the history of MEK, Kamali Dehghan states, “Today, it functions as a fringe exiled group with characteristics of a cult that works for regime change in Iran, though it has little visible support inside the country. It portrays itself as a democratic political institution although its own internal structure is anything but.” [2]
In 2019 when some photos were leaked from inside Camp Ashraf 3 showing members sitting in front of monitors in the group’s troll farm, the Khodabandehs wrote, “What Rajavi doesn’t understand is that these photos show beyond any words that the MEK doesn’t share our values. The leader is selling unthinking, unquestioning, obedient slaves, people who won’t act or speak unless ordered to do so. And that would only be ordered if it were productive for the MEK, regardless of the needs or desires of the worker.” [3]
![MEK troll farm in Albania](https://www.nejatngo.org/sq/wp-content/uploads/blank.gif)
Leaked photos showing MEK members at work
“What these images portray are conditions of modern slavery,” they continued. “These are elderly people who are unable to escape this cult and are coerced into performing work for which they receive no recompense. They exist on cruelly basic accommodation and sustenance, whereby even asking for new underwear puts the petitioner under question about their loyalty to the leader and the cause. They cannot leave because in Albania they have nowhere to go, no identity documents or work permits, no money, and they do not speak the local language.” [4]
To Download the video file click here
In March 2020, Murtaza Hussein and Mathew Cole of the Intercept, also suggested, “the MEK is a highly secretive organization”. They had interviewed five defectors of the group to support their assertion. “Five of them agreed to speak on the record about their experiences, which were broadly consistent and often confirmed aspects of other former members’ accounts,” they wrote. “Secret Iranian intelligence documents obtained by The Intercept also confirm several of their claims, including information that is not publicly known. Their testimonies reveal a brutal organization that, for decades, has held thousands in a state of physical and psychological slavery as it degenerated from a popular political movement to a freakish cult of personality under the absolute control of one all-powerful leader.” [5]
Thus, the so-called celebration that was recently hold in Camp Ashraf and other similar ones, are actually a demonstration of the modern slavery that is practiced inside the Cult of Rajavi every day.
By Mazda Parsi
References:
[1] Khodabandeh, Ann & Massoud, Nobody Can Be “Comfortable” with Regime Change Involving MEK, The lobelog, August 22, 2019.
[2] Kamali Dehghan, Saeed, Who is the Iranian group targeted by bombers and beloved of Trump allies?, The Gurdian, July 2nd, 2018.
[3] Khodabandeh, Ann & Massoud, Nobody Can Be “Comfortable” with Regime Change Involving MEK, The lobelog, August 22, 2019.
[4] ibid
[5] Hussein, Murtaza & Cole, Mathew, Defectors Tell of Torture and Forced Sterilization in Militant Iranian Cult, The Intercept, March 22nd, 2020.
Batul Rajaee was a top commander of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (the MKO/ MEK/ PMOI/ Cult of Rajavi). She died of cancer in 2012. The news of her death was a pleasing one for a large number of members and former members of the group.
Batul Rajaee is the symbol of an oppressive violent commander of the Cult of Rajavi who always wanted to serve “Sister Maryam” (Maryam Rajavi) by punishing the rank and file. After her death, at least four defectors of the group gave testimonies about the atrocities committed by Batul. Foad Basri, Hadi Shabani, Ali PourAhmad and Kambiz Bagherzadeh confirm that she was so devoted to the leaders of MEK that the rank and file could hardly ever stay safe from her violent abusive behavior.
![Batul Rajaee](https://www.nejatngo.org/sq/wp-content/uploads/blank.gif)
Batul Rajaee
“When I first entered MEK in the Winter of 1984, as a 19-year-old boy, there was no woman in the entrance section until the day I saw Batul Rajaee,” Ali PourAhmad writes about her. “I was shocked to see her. I wondered if all women in the MEK were like her?”
Batul Rajaee was also the commander of prisons in Camp Ashraf, for a period of time. “She was so aggressive that you can simply imagine what she would do with the prisoners of the group—who were also members of the group,” Hadi Shabani writes. “Rajavi needed such atrocious women to control his cult. Batul Rajaee had been turned into a person that no one was willing to encounter her, even for a second.”
Not all women in the cult of Rajavi were such monsters as Batul Rajaee was. However, most female commanders have been cruel people who go crazy easily and abuse their lower ranks verbally and physically. Mahvash Sepehri, Fahimeh Arvani and Mozhgan Parsaee are a few of dozens of female commanders of MEK. They are notoriously known as most hated figures of the group.
Considering testimonies of both male and female defectors of MEK, one can find a very destructive culture that rules the group’s female members. The cult around Massoud Rajavi’s personality that practices many suppressive jargons and is committed to polygamy has been simply able to demolish emotions in the inner self of these women.
“Salvation Dancing” is one of the most notorious jargons in the Cult of Rajavi in which female members of the group’s Elit Council had to remove their clothes and dance nude before the eyes of Massoud and Maryam Rajavi. “These fierce female commanders are the outcome of salvation dance,” Hadi Shabani writes.
By Mazda Parsi
“MKO has a very visible public profile, but is not a transparent organization”, according to Landinfo report of Norway.
Landinfo is a Norwegian Institute that published a 45-page study on the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO/ MEK/ PMOI/ Cult of Rajavi) in April 2021. The paper which is seemingly prepared for the Norwegian Immigration Authorities is based on various sources. However, the authors assert that they tried to choose the most reliable independent sources on the topic. “What is MKO’s inner character is a controversial question”, they write. “It has therefore been important to build the presentation of this topic as independently as possible. The information on internal matters in MKO is partly based on reports published by human rights organizations and Western media, and partly on observations from various sources in MKO’s camp in Iraq”.
Therefore, the paper lists certain sources as the references on what is really going on in the MKO:
• In 2005, Human Rights Watch published the report “No Exit. Human Rights Abuses Inside the MKO Camps », based on interviews with twelve former MKO members who then resided in European countries (HRW 2005).
• A large number of media have interviewed defectors who are in Europe – for example The Guardian (Merat 2018), New York Times (Kingsley 2019), BBC News (Pressly & Kasapi 2019), The Intercept (Hussain & Cole 2020b) and Dagens Næringsliv (Engdal 2019a & b).
• The UN operation in Iraq, UNAMI, had access to the camps in Iraq after Saddam Hussein’s regime was overthrown in 2003. UNAMI had a monitoring and broker role, and have reported on what they observed in human rights reports for Iraq (UNAMI 2013, 2011 and 2009).
• At the request of the US government, the think tank RAND Corporations prepared a report on MKO in 2009. The report is based on interviews in MKO’s Camp Ashraf in Iraq (Goulka et al. 2009).
• In 2003 and 2020, the New York Times received permission to visit MKO’s camps in Iraq (Rubin 2003) and Albania (Kingsley 2020), respectively.
Based on the above-mentioned sources, in a part subtitled “Nature of the organization”, Landinfo describes the MKO with the characteristics of “an authoritarian, cult-like organization, which strictly controls its members”. These characteristics are enumerated by the authors as the followings:
Requirements for self-sacrifice and submission
members must sign a contract where they commit to sacrifice everything in the battle to defeat the enemy. That means that they must do whatever the organization requires them to do.
Person worship
It is claimed that the ideology centers around a cult of personality, in which the members must show leaders unreserved devotion and submission, almost a form for religious worship. The informal title Imam Zaman should have been used for Massoud Rajavi, and the actual membership ceremony continues allegedly in taking an oath of allegiance to the leaders.
Ideological indoctrination
The indoctrination allegedly takes place through a mixture of propaganda and fear tactics. It is pointed out that the members must regularly study MKO’s ideology and see recordings of Massoud Rajavi’s speeches and various street demonstrations in Europe.
Sexual control and emotional isolation
Some of the things that members have to give up are family life and romance relationships. The camps are gender segregated, and married couples have reportedly had to divorce and live apart in complete celibacy. Personal friendships should also be strongly discouraged. The love of the members shall, instead, be channeled towards MKO’s leaders
Degrading confessions of unwanted thoughts and feelings
To check the members’ dedication to the movement, it is claimed that men and women must attend ritual self-examination meetings. Here they must openly confess and apologize impure thoughts, personal dreams, disloyal tendencies and character flaws.
Physical abuse, deprivation of liberty
Those who have asked to leave the group must have been put on isolation for long periods, and have been subjected to mental and / or physical abuse. Other unfair and unacceptable behavior that must also have been punished by the leaders are: expressing or encourage disagreement with MKO’s strategy, listening to foreign radio stations, sharing individual political views with other members, or making private phone calls.
Hard work and sleep deprivation
At MKO’s camps, residents often have to work 16-17 hours a day, with one limited number of hours of sleep. Continuous construction projects are implemented to maintain a high work intensity, in addition to military training.
Martyrdom has a central role
The members and sympathizers who have lost their lives in the fight against the Iranian government, honored as martyrs. MKO even claims that it is about 120,000 persons. The worship of martyrdom and the degree of devotion of some members to MKO leadership, became visible to the world in 2003, when French police arrested Maryam Rajavi in Paris. In protest, ten MKO members and sympathizers set themselves on fire in different European cities, and two of them died. It was also arranged hunger strikes. Pictures of people who had sewn together their eyes and lips was published in western media.
Recruitment on false premises
The movement that managed to mobilize half a million people for mass protests in June 1981, has had a deficit of volunteer recruits since the end of the Iran-Iraq war. This should have led the group to recruit new members with dishonest premises. Iranians were allegedly lured to Iraq with false promises of property, work, marriage and help to seek asylum in the West. Recruitment agents must have sought out Iranian dissidents in particular, but also addressed economic migrants in countries such as Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. Others reported methods were to smuggle family members out of Iran to visit relatives in the camps, or pay human traffickers to redirect people who were on the run, to Iraq.
by Mazda Parsi
Ali Shirzad was young and enthusiastic to bring freedom to his nation when he left Iran to join the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO/ MEK/ PMOI/ Cult of Rajavi). He walked through Iran-Turkey border for eight days to go to the group’s headquarters in Iraq via Turkey, in the Fall of 1987.
As a knowledgeable educated and artistic man, he dreamed of the MEK camp as the ideal world where he would be able to read more books and to have more thoughtful discussions for his personal growth and for the growth of his society. But, soon, he realized his dream would never come true in MEK.
“As I arrived in Iraq, I was shocked to see that there was no time left for studying and thinking,” he writes in his detailed memoirs of living in MEK. “I was deprived of thinking in any way.”
![Ali Shirzad](https://www.nejatngo.org/sq/wp-content/uploads/blank.gif)
Ali Shirzad
According to Ali Shirzad, MEK leaders admire two types of members, the ideologic ones and the trusted one. The former are those who ideologically are close to the leaders Massoud and Maryam Rajavi, the later are those who are always trusted because they never question the orders; they just obey the leaders.
“What happened to me in the Cult of Rajavi?”, Shirzad wonders. “Not only I did not learn anything, but also I forgot everything I knew. When I left MEK my brain had no Gray Cortex!”
Despite his passion for poetry, arts and music he was not able to go for them for some time after his defection. “I was not in the mood for them”, he writes. “I found myself a shallow person without soul and emotions.”
That was why he did not contact his family until a few months after his departure from the cult-like system of MEK. “I had to wait to rebuild my personality and to cope with my animal nature”, he asserts. “That disaster had been caused by Massoud Rajavi. He had killed the human inside me.”
Ali Shirzad believes that if a person even has a supernatural wisdom, he will turn into an idiot under the ruling system of the Rajavis.
For years, the term “alternative” has been the most widely used term in the literature and propaganda of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (the MKO/ MEK/ PMOI/ Cult of Rajavi) and its paid American sponsors. The claim of Being the alternative of the Islamic Republic, actually demonstrates Massoud Rajavi’s desire to replace the Iranian government with his cult of personality.
However, it is interesting to examine the term alternative in political literature and its consistency with the situation of MEK on political horizon of Iran. The issue can be examined from three aspects: first of all, the components necessary for an alternative to a political system. what capacities, potentials, abilities and practices should an alternative essentially have? Secondly, what capabilities the alternative to the Islamic Republic should have? Indeed, such an alternative has to hold certain components in order to answer the needs of people. Thirdly, Can the Cult of Rajavi basically be considered as an alternative?
The history of MEK
The history of MEK began in Iran in the 1960s. There are certain major phases in the half-a-century history of the Mujahedin Khalq, which affects almost all analyses and historiography about its background. The assassination of seven US military personnel and civilians working in Iran, during the 1970s mark the anti-American substance of the group since its establishment.
![Iran Terror Victims](https://www.nejatngo.org/sq/wp-content/uploads/blank.gif)
Iran Terror Victims
After the 1979 revolution in Iran and the breakout of Massoud Rajavi with the newly established government in Tehran, the most violent period of MEK history came out. 12 thousand assassinations were committed by MEK operatives all over the Iranian cities. Only a few of these terror attacks targeted political or military officials. The rest of the victims were innocent civilians including women and children.
![Rajavi and Saddam](https://www.nejatngo.org/sq/wp-content/uploads/blank.gif)
Photo: President of the National Resistance Council of Iran Massoud Rajavi, left, meets with and the Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in Iraq in June 1986.
The eighth-year war between Iran and Iraq, according to the vast majority of Iranian people signs the greatest honor of the nation for their defense against Saddam Hussein, known as one of the most hated enemy of the nation. Meanwhile, Saddam Hussein sheltered MEK in his territory from which MEK entered into a war against its own country fellow men. This was the like a suicide for MEK because it lost its last bases among the Iranian public.
The fourth weakening phase for the MEK was started by the leadership of Massoud Rajavi who turned the group into a cult of personality around himself. The cult-like system that he founded became a very proper system to violate the human rights of members.
The revelations made by defectors of MEK on forced divorce, sexual abuse, torture and murder inside the Cult of Rajavi, despite the leaders’ slogans of human rights, freedom, women’s rights and democracy, exposed the true nature of the group.
MEK’s popularity is unheard of
The group that claims to be the alternative to the Islamic Republic, does not enjoy any support among the Iranian population. Nor inside Iran neither in the Iranian diaspora. It has lost even the support of the few thousand members inside its camp in Albania – the majority of them do not dare to leave the group due to the suppressive cult-like system of the leadership. The MEK has no genuine support by the side of the enemies of the Iranian government. It is regularly considered as a bargaining chip or a proxy force in the ups and downs of the relations between Iran and the West.
Moreover, the other groups that oppose the Islamic Republic, despite all the fundamental and radical differences share one viewpoint: staying away from MEK. All opposition groups against Iran, believe that essentially any trace of the name of MEK, with its hefty criminal record, will bring any opposition and protest to complete failure.
Internal stability
The internal atmosphere of the MEK is not so different from the level of popularity of the group in the Iranian community. To this day, the MEK has been able to maintain a few thousands of members as hostages in its headquarters in France and Albania, using physical constraints, control of thought, intimidation and other cult-like practices.
The high rate of defection from the group in recent years show that if the door of the headquarters — the jails of MEK—gets open to the free world members will leave the group, except for the criminal heads and perhaps some old men and women who do not have anywhere to go. No one is willing to stay in a system that oppresses its members day and night.
MEK does not really have the very two to three thousand members in Albania and cannot count on their capacity. It had to resort to street beggars and homeless people, as well as students of foreign countries to show off its gatherings as crowded by the rented crowd.
Qualitative capacity
Forces that are still forcibly kept inside the group do not know anything about the free world, the world of information and technological advances and eventually, the truth of the Iranian political and social situation.
This Ignorance makes MEK uninfluential in the Iranian community. The majority of members of MEK are just as militant forces who do not have the necessary creativity for activity in cyberspace, social networks. They are not even able to produce a poster and slogan compatible to the Iranian society.
In fact, they stumbled and stopped at the very time of the 1980s when they were involved in a bloody clash with Iran and they lost the last chance to live free. Then, they went to Camp Ashraf, Iraq to donate their life to Rajavi.
Finally, it should be noted that the Cult of Rajavi does not have any clues of being able to be considered as an alternative to the Islamic Republic of Iran and generally, any other political system. It is not even categorized as an opposition group. MEK is definitely a destructive cult with a long history of terrorist acts that does not embrace the characteristics of an opposition group. MEK has never behaved like an opposition. Instead of relying on its own nation, it has always tried to bank on the enemies the Iranian nation, such as Iraq, during the Saddam Hussein’s era, the United States and the Zionist regime.
An Irish lawmaker has apologized for delivering an address to an event held by the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO), an exiled anti-Iran terrorist group that has killed thousands of Iranians since its formation.
Fine Gael TD Jennifer Carroll MacNeill addressed an online event hosted by the MKO on March 8 to mark the International Women’s Day (IWD), after she was asked by a constituent to speak at an “online parliamentary conference” to celebrate the day.
In her address, she expressed solidarity with “brave, brave Iranian women who have been actively taking part in and standing at the forefront of the anti-regime protests.”
However, MacNeill says now that the invitation she received in relation to the event did not make any reference to the MKO, “nor was I ever aware or made aware of any link between the event and this organization.”
Since it was founded, the MKO launched a campaign of bombings and assassinations in Iran. The terrorist group also fought alongside Iraqi forces in the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s war on Iran in the 1980s.
![Jennifer Carroll MacNeill](https://www.nejatngo.org/sq/wp-content/uploads/blank.gif)
Irish lawmaker Jennifer Carroll MacNeill
Widely known as a cult, the MKO is currently based in Albania, where it enjoys freedom of activity after being delisted as a terrorist organization by the European Union and the United States in 2009 and 2012, respectively.
“I apologize for any link, no matter how remote, unwitting or inadvertent, to any such organization. The invitation made no such reference and my motivation was entirely about the advancement of women’s rights on International Women’s Day in a country where women’s rights are very considerably behind where we would hope they would be,” she claimed, speaking to the Sunday Independent.
Press TV has visited an Iranian family that was exposed to a terror attack carried out by a formidable US-backed terror group, known as the MKO.
In spite of its claims to favor gender equality and women’s rights, the MKO is particularly notorious for sexually abusing its female members, with a number of its defectors having spoken out in recent years about forced sexual relations with Masoud Rajavi, the leader of the group who is believed to be dead.
“There was a strong pressure” on MKO women to initiate sexual relationships with Rajavi “to show your commitment to the leader and the group,” Batool Sultani, a former MKO commander, recalled in an interview with the Intercept published last year. Sultani defected in 2006.
Another defector, identified as Sima, said that in 1995 “Rajavi gave every single woman in the organization a pendant and told us that we are all connected to him and to no other man.”
Sima told the Intercept that she was forced to divorce her husband and, like Sultani, eventually became sexually involved with Rajavi.
“When you are under brainwashing, you would do anything and everything,” she said. “You would do any military operation, you would go and have sexual relations with your leader, you would sell information and intelligence. We were under constant control by the leader.”
Regardless of its ill fame, the MKO has in recent years held numerous big events attended by senior American, Israeli and Saudi officials, including the late US Senator John McCain, former mayor of New York City Rudy Giuliani, former US National Security Advisor John Bolton, former US Senator Joe Lieberman, and former director of Saudi Arabia’s intelligence agency Turki bin Faisal Al Saud.
Jennifer Carroll MacNeill apologises for address to ‘cult-like’ Iranian group Mujahedin-e Khalq
Fine Gael TD Jennifer Carroll MacNeill has apologised for delivering an address to a “cult-like” Iranian dissident organisation that has been linked to terrorism.
Ms Carroll MacNeill addressed an online event hosted by the People’s Mujahedin of Iran on March 8 to mark International Women’s Day (IWD).
The People’s Mujahedin of Iran, or MEK (Mujahedin-e Khalq), which is committed to overthrowing Iran’s Islamic Republic, has been described as a cult by disaffected former members and was once designated as a terrorist organisation by the US and UK.
The UN’s Committee Against Torture has previously said the MEK has been “involved in terrorist activities and is therefore a less legitimate replacement for the current regime”. Ms Carroll MacNeill spoke at the event on the issue of human rights and expressed solidarity with “brave, brave Iranian women who have been actively taking part in and standing at the forefront of the anti-regime protests”.
![Jennifer Carroll MacNeill](https://www.nejatngo.org/sq/wp-content/uploads/blank.gif)
Jennifer Carroll MacNeill apologises for address to ‘cult-like’ Iranian group Mujahedin-e Khalq
Speaking to the Sunday Independent, Ms Carroll MacNeill said she had been asked by a constituent to speak at an online parliamentary conference to celebrate IWD.
“The event was attended by many other European parliamentarians and was in recognition of Iranian women’s fight for gender equality,” she said.
“The invitation and correspondence I received in relation to the event did not make any reference to the [MEK], nor was I ever aware or made aware of any link between the event and this organisation.
“I apologise for any link, no matter how remote, unwitting or inadvertent, to any such organisation. The invitation made no such reference and my motivation was entirely about the advancement of women’s rights on International Women’s Day in a country where women’s rights are very considerably behind where we would hope they would be.”
In her address to the conference, the Dún Laoghaire TD also referenced Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney’s engagement with the Iranian government in recent months as part of Ireland’s membership of the UN Security Council. She said Mr Coveney had asked her to inform the conference that in a meeting with his Iranian counterpart Javad Zarif in Tehran in March he raised “a whole range of human rights issues, issues [that are] anathema to our foreign minister and to our Irish parliament, that there is, for example, no law on domestic violence and that the age of maturity of criminal responsibility for girls in Iran is nine, whereas it’s 15 for boys”.
Mr Coveney was last week criticised by one of his own colleagues, backbencher John Paul Phelan, for “cosying up” up to the Iranian regime having twice met with the foreign minister in recent months. Mr Phelan said Mr Coveney appeared to be “fawning” over Mr Zarif when he visited Dublin earlier this month and questioned how his Fine Gael colleague could “justify soft-soaping the Iranians in the midst of what’s going on in Palestine and Israel” and given Hamas’s stated goal of destroying the state of Israel.
By Hugh O’Connell, independent
In a cult, both women and men suffer in the iron grip of charismatic and authoritarian cult leaders, however, women followers face a unique set of life-altering issues — and those unique issues often become the focus of media coverage of cult cases.
According to Alexandra Stein, the author of “Terror, Love and Brainwashing: Attachment in Cults and Totalitarian Systems”, Women’s right to control their bodies, their child-bearing, their sexuality and their mothering are all taken away in cults as the leader grabs control of these most intimate parts of their lives.
The Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MeK) is one of these cults which has confined hundreds of women to its walled compound, once in northeast Iraq and now in southeast Europe, on the pretext of protecting their rights. A number of violations of women’s rights have been reported so far by a number of its defected members and international rights groups and institutions.
Habilian Association has published a bulletin which contains ten articles covering the issue of Women’s rights abuses within the MEK camps.
The bulletin be may be accessed here.