My name is Mohamamd Turang, I am from Qeshm Island.
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A delegation of former members of the Mujahedin Khalq attended a conference in the European Parliament.
On Thursday, November 21, a delegation of MEK defectors including Ghorban Ali Hosseinnejad, Isa Azadeh, Mohammad Karami, Reza Sadeghi Jebeli and Ali Akbar Rastgou attended the conference “Shrinking spaces: Policing humanitarianism and human rights defenders” held by the Greens in the European Parliament, Brussels.
The conference addressed how the criminalisation affects the rights of citizens and discuss ways to protect NGOs and human rights defenders. The speakers of the panels included a number of Greens MEPs and guest speakers such as experts and authorities of the Amnesty International’s European Institutions Office.
Socializing with other participants, MEK defectors tried to describe the conditions of refugees who are behind the bars of the cult-like MEK establishment in Albania. They stated that the Cult of Rajavi (MEK/MKO) has deprived its members of their basic rights.
The defectors clarified that the MEK members do not enjoy the right of education, marriage, having family, contacting the outside world; they have no access to modern communication tools.
The audience were impressed by the human right violations that take place in the MEK. Responding to their questions, defectors informed them of the most recent conditions of dissident members who are inside the MEK camps and defectors who have left the group.
For six years, Albania has been home to one of Iran’s main opposition groups, the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, or MEK. But hundreds of members have walked out – some complaining about the organisation’s rigid rules enforcing celibacy, and control over contact with family. Now, dozens languish in the Albanian capital, Tirana, unable to return to Iran or get on with their lives.
“I didn’t speak to my wife and son for over 37 years – they thought I’d died. But I told them, ‘No, I’m alive, I’m living in Albania…’ They cried.”
That first contact by phone with his family after so many years was difficult for Gholam Mirzai, too. He is 60, and absconded two years ago from the MEK’s military-style encampment outside Tirana.
Now he scrapes by in the city, full of regrets and accused by his former Mujahideen comrades of spying for their sworn enemy, the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The MEK has a turbulent and bloody history. As Islamist-Marxist radicals, its members backed the 1979 Iranian revolution that toppled the Shah. But relations with a triumphant Ayatollah Khomeini soon soured. When the government cracked down hard, the Mujahideen had to run for their lives.
Neighbouring Iraq offered sanctuary, and from their desert citadel during the Iran/Iraq war (1980-1988), the MEK fought on the side of Saddam Hussein against their homeland.
Gholam Mirzai was serving in the Iranian military when he was captured by Saddam Hussein’s forces at the start of that conflict. He spent eight years as a prisoner of war in Iraq. But in time, Iranian prisoners like Mirzai were encouraged to join forces with their compatriots. And that is what he did.
Mirzai is now a “disassociate” – one of hundreds of former MEK members who have left the organisation since they moved to Albania. With the help of funds from family, some have paid people smugglers to take them elsewhere in Europe, and perhaps two have made it back to Iran. But dozens remain in Tirana, stateless and officially unable to work.
So how did the battle-hardened members of the MEK – formerly a proscribed terrorist organisation in the United States and Europe – find their way to this corner of Europe?
In 2003, the allied invasion of Iraq made life perilous for the MEK. The organisation’s protector, Saddam Hussein, was suddenly gone, and the Mujahideen were repeatedly attacked – hundreds were killed and injured. Fearing an even worse humanitarian disaster, the Americans approached the Albanian government in 2013 and persuaded it to receive some 3,000 MEK members in Tirana.
MEK Terrorist Cult Members In Albania Who Mustn’t Think About SexFemale MEK fighters training during the Iran/Iraq war (1984)
“We offered them shelter from attacks and abuse, and the possibility to lead a normal life in a country where they are not harassed, attacked or brutalised,” says Lulzim Basha, leader of the Democratic Party, which was in government at the time, and is now in opposition.
In Albania, politics are deeply polarised – everything is contested. But, almost uniquely, the presence of the MEK isn’t – publicly, both governing and opposition parties support their Iranian guests.
For the MEK, Albania was a completely new environment. Gholam Mirzai was astonished that even children had mobile phones. And because some of the Mujahideen were initially accommodated in apartment buildings on the edge of the capital, the organisation’s grip on its members was looser than it had been previously. In Iraq, it had controlled every aspect of their lives, but here, temporarily, there was a chance to exercise a degree of freedom.
“There was some rough ground behind the flats where the commanders told us we should take daily exercise,” remembers Hassan Heyrany, another “disassociate”.
Heyrany and his colleagues used the cover of trees and bushes to sneak around to the internet cafe close by and make contact with their families.
“When we were in Iraq, if you wanted to phone home, the MEK called you weak – we had no relationship with our families,” he says. “But when we came to Tirana, we found the internet for personal use.”
Towards the end of 2017, though, the MEK moved out to new headquarters. The camp is built on a gently sloping hill in the Albanian countryside, about 30km (19 miles) from the capital. Behind the imposing, iron gates, there is an impressive marble arch topped with golden lions. A tree-lined boulevard runs up to a memorial dedicated to the thousands of people who have lost their lives in the MEK’s struggle against the Iranian government.
Uninvited journalists are not welcome here. But in July this year, thousands attended the MEK’s Free Iran event at the camp. Politicians from around the globe, influential Albanians and people from the nearby village of Manze, joined thousands of MEK members and their leader, Maryam Rajavi, in the glitzy auditorium. US President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, addressed the crowd.
Rudy Giuliani: “If you think this is a cult, then there’s something wrong with you”
“These are people who are dedicated to freedom,” he said, referring to the uniformly dressed and gender-segregated MEK members present in the hall.
“And if you think that’s a cult, then there’s something wrong with you,” he added, bringing the house down.
Powerful politicians like Giuliani support the MEK’s goal of regime change in Iran. The movement’s manifesto includes a commitment to human rights, gender equality and participatory democracy for Iran.
But Hassan Heyrany does not buy it any more. Last year he left the MEK, rejecting what he saw as the leadership’s oppressive control of his private life. Heyrany had joined the Mujahideen in his 20s, attracted by its commitment to political pluralism.
“It was very attractive. But if you believe in democracy, you cannot suppress the soul of your members,” he says.
The nadir of Heyrany’s life with the MEK was an evening meeting he was obliged to attend.
“We had a little notebook, and if we had any sexual moments we should write them down. For example, ‘Today, in the morning, I had an erection.’”
Romantic relationships and marriage are prohibited by the MEK. It was not always like that – parents and their children used to join the Mujahideen. But after the bloody defeat of one MEK offensive by the Iranians, the leadership argued it had happened because the Mujahideen were distracted by personal relationships. Mass divorce followed. Children were sent away – often to foster homes in Europe – and single MEK members pledged to stay that way.
In that notebook, Heyrany says they also had to write any personal daydreams.
“For example, ‘When I saw a baby on television, I had a feeling that I wished to have a child or a family of my own.’”
And the Mujahideen had to read from their notebooks in front of their commander and comrades at the daily meeting.
“That’s very hard for a person,” Heyrany says.
Now he likens the MEK camp in Manze to Animal Farm, George Orwell’s critique of the Stalinist era in the USSR. “It’s a cult,” he says simply.
A diplomatic source in Tirana described the MEK as “a unique cultural group – not a cult, but cult-like.”
The BBC was not able to put any of this to the MEK, because the organisation refused to be interviewed. But in Albania, a nation that endured a punishing, closed, Communist regime for decades there is some sympathy for the MEK leadership’s position – at least on the prohibition of personal relationships.
“In extreme situations, you make extreme choices,” says Diana Culi, a writer, women’s activist and former MP for the governing Socialist Party.
“They have vowed to fight all their lives for the liberation of their country from a totalitarian regime. Sometimes we have difficulty accepting strong belief in a cause. This is personal sacrifice, and it’s a mentality I understand.”
Even so, some Albanians worry that the MEK’s presence threatens national security.
Two Iranian diplomats were expelled following allegations about violent plots against the Mujahideen, and the European Union has accused Tehran of being behind conspiracies to assassinate regime opponents, including MEK members, on Dutch, Danish and French soil. (The Iranian Embassy in Tirana declined the BBC’s request for an interview.)
A highly-placed source in the Socialist Party is also concerned that the intelligence services lack the capacity to monitor more than 2,500 MEK members with military training.
“No-one with a brain would’ve accepted them here,” he says.
A diplomat says some of the “disassociates” are certainly working for Iran. Gholam Mirzai and Hassan Heyrany have themselves been accused by the MEK of being agents for Tehran. It is a charge they deny.
Now both men are focused on the future. With help from family in Iran, Heyrany is opening a coffee shop, and he is dating an Albanian. At 40, he is younger than most of his fellow cadres and he remains optimistic.
Gholam Mirzai’s situation is more precarious. His health is not good – he walks with a limp after being caught in one of the bombardments of the MEK camp in Iraq – and he is short of money.
He is tormented by the mistakes he has made in his life – and something he found out when he first got in touch with his family.
When Mirzai left to go to war against Iraq in 1980, he had a one-month-old son. After the Iran/Iraq war ended, his wife and other members of his family came to the MEK camp in Iraq to look for Mirzai. But the MEK sent them away, and told him nothing about their visit.
This 60-year-old man never knew he was a much-missed father and husband until he made that first call home after 37 years.
“They didn’t tell me that my family came searching for me in Iraq. They didn’t tell me anything about my wife and son,” he says.
“All of these years I thought about my wife and son. Maybe they died in the war… I just didn’t know.”
BBC Albania MEK Rajavi Cult 9
Gholam Mirzai in Tirana today
The son he has not seen in the flesh since he was a tiny baby is nearly 40 now. And Mirzai proudly displays a picture of this grown-up man on his WhatsApp id. But renewed contact has been painful too.
“I was responsible for this situation – the separation. I can’t sleep too much at night because I think about them. I’m always nervous, angry. I am ashamed of myself,” Mirzai says.
Shame is not easy to live with. And he has only one desire now.
“I want to go back to Iran, to live with my wife and son. That is my wish.”
Gholam Mirzai has visited the Iranian Embassy in Tirana to ask for help, and his family have lobbied the authorities in Tehran. He has heard nothing. So he waits – without citizenship, without a passport, and dreaming of home.
Linda Pressly and Albana Kasapi, BBC News
Without a Trace finds the Mojahedin accused of being terrorists: MEK camp is a prison! In Iran, MEK ordered us to kill people
Former members of the Mojahedin who fled the Iranian opposition’s camp in Manez and were then accused of terrorism, gave evidence in an interview with Without a Trace of the massacres that the former terrorist fighters, MEK, committed in Iran. They consider the camp in Manez a prison, they say they have left because they want to live freely.
Testimony: Some Albanian officials have been corrupted by this organization, this means we are not allowed to work, nor have a residence permit. It’s a fanatical organization. They want us in prison.
TIRANA – Three Iranian refugees, former members of the Iranian opposition MEK in Albania, who have left the organization, deny the allegations made against them. Hassan Hayrani, Abdurrahman Mohammad Jan, Gholam Reza Shekari were all described by Ali Safavi, a member of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, as agents of the Iranian regime who should be urgently arrested and expelled from Albania as they pose a danger to them, although their location was not known.
The Without a Trace show on Report TV investigated the case by finding out not only the whereabouts of the three aforementioned Iranians, but also conducted this lengthy interview with them. They live in Albania, in the Fresco area on the outskirts of Tirana, with a residence permit renewed every three months, and have dismissed all the allegations by clarifying their positions in the MEK organization they previously belonged to.
In an interview with Without a Trace, former members of the Mojahedin give evidence of the massacres that their former terrorist comrades have committed in Iran. These statements come shortly after the release of information by Albanian police that a year earlier it had prevented a terrorist attack on MEK members and that several persons, agents of the Iranian regime, had been identified as responsible. While they consider the camp in Manez to be a prison, these former members say they have left because they want to live freely.
Interviews conducted by the investigative editorial board of Without a Trace
Hassan Hayrani: My name is Hassan, I am a former MEK member. After the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2010, I joined the organization. After a few years with them, I left the organization about a year and a half ago. And now I live here at Fresco, and thankfully this is the best opportunity for me.
When were you recruited by the MEK organization?
Hassan Hayrani: At first we came here after the leader of the organization promised us that the situation would change once we arrived in Albania. But sadly, after about a year, MEK leaders, with money coming from Saudi Arabia, set up a prison rather than a camp in Manez, similar to those in Iraq. There are other people in there who unfortunately can’t get out of this situation in Manez. We asked the leaders of the organization why are you forbidding us from having a family, forbidding outside contacts, no internet or freedom, and why do you say we are fighting for the freedom of the people of Iran, when you don’t allow freedom within the organization. They told us that they do not believe that these are the conditions inside and that they believe in freedom. The leaders of the organization told us that these conditions were there for our benefit at a time when Saddam Hussein was overthrown and the Iranian regime was spreading terror, and so under these conditions we agreed. But if you go to Manez, you will see that it’s like a prison, and that security is done with a shotgun. So, it’s just like a prison.
Did you receive an order to carry out a mission there?
As for the organization, I joined after the fall of Saddam Hussein. At that time the organization had no operations against Iran. But we had some attacks by the Iraqi government because the organization did not follow their laws. There were some conflicts between them, and members of the organization were involved in these conflicts.
Are there any dangerous persons in this organization in Albania?
No, they do not have dangerous persons, because Albania is a safe country. There is no need for this to become a battleground either. But the leaders of the organization only want to turn the camp into a jail, to keep those living in Manez confined. The leader of this camp does not want members of this organization to have contact with other people outside this camp. And on the other hand, it does not want out-of-camp people to have contact with the people inside. For example, there have been cases where journalists have not even been allowed to interview persons living in Manez on the grounds that their news organization is affiliated with the Iranian secret service and they fear a terrorist attack. This is laughable. They only want us to have the toughest conditions here.
We escaped MEK without conflict, we are just looking for a quiet life. We have no problem with either the Albanian citizens or the Albanian government. We have been living here for 3 years, and we are free, we are living a peaceful life. We have no problem. It’s MEK who doesn’t tolerate us here.
Who is accusing you?
The Mojahedin Organization called MEK, which you have already heard of, accuse us of being mercenaries, agents of the Iranian regime, they reported that to every journalist and media outlet here. Because we broke away from this organization to lead a civilian life and we now lead lives as civilians, they don’t allow us to do that. Our existence in this country, as free and civilized people, encourages other members to leave this organization.
How did you become part of this organization?
From my experience in this organization there are some people I know of, some Albanian officials who are corrupted by this organization and do not let us work, nor have a residence permit. It’s a fanatical organization. They’d love us to be in prison.
When were you recruited by the MEK organization?
I’ve been a part of it for 28 years and have spent much of my life, my youth, with them.
I have given so much of my life, all they wanted from me. I decided to break away from this organization to have a free life. After all these years I have known about the terrorist acts carried out earlier, and that now they want to fall into American hands, I don’t agree with this, this is sufficient for me to want to live my life as a civilian. My free life here consists of all this. I lost all my life, maybe a lot, maybe a little. After so many years I found out about the free world, the free life and I wanted to live it. And when I saw free life here I decided to break away from this organization.
I decided to leave the organization three years ago. Now I live in Tirana.
A few days ago, the spokesman of this organization, of which I was a member, accused me of being an Iranian agent as well as a terrorist. He has no basis for this nor to ask the government to arrest me. This is faked news because they do not want me and my friends to live freely. This has created problems by limiting us and our lives here, they want to force us to move to another country, illegally if necessary. But even if we wanted to go to another country, we cannot because we have no documents.
What is the purpose of this organization?
When I decided to leave this organization, they were ordering us and dictating rules for us. They said, If you leave, we will pay for you, you can spend our money, but you have to obey some rules, such as: you can’t talk to anyone and you can’t live as you want. We will tell you who you should live with and what to do. I did not accept this and so received no money from the organization.
Then why did you accept to be a part of MEK for 30 years?
I really trusted this organization at first. When I joined, I believed. I believed in freedom, in democracy. I thought that the people in Iran would live freely. That MEK would bring democracy. But little by little I realized that this organization was a lie and that democracy would not come and that the only ones enjoying power were the leadership.
Did you witness the massacres in Iraq?
When I was in Iraq, in 1998 maybe, I don’t remember well, I was in an operation in Kurdistan. In this operation I was the shooter and the one driving the tank. And during this operation I was ordered to kill people, to carry out a massacre there.
Have you been ordered by MEK to commit terrorist acts?
When I was in MEK, I was part of a group that would go to Iran and were ordered to commit terrorist acts; to detonate a bomb and kill people as terrorists.
I was part of a group, and there were plenty of groups who went to Iran to do the same thing, to kill people.
A small group consisted of 3 or 5 people and we went to Iran after crossing the border and went to several Iranian cities and killed some civilians.
I was in that group, but to my good fortune I didn’t act because I wasn’t ready to do it, physically, my body wasn’t ready to do it. And that mission was given to another person in the squad.
We ask the Albanian government to give us a residency permit, or another document to allow us to have a better situation. We need work, to make money. We need help.
Some of my friends are trying to earn money by doing business. Now we have spent all the money in the [Ramsa charity] package. My mom, my brother sent me money to help me make my life here.
Forty years ago, I was living with my family. When I was a soldier sent to the war front, I was a prisoner of war for 9 years during the Iran-Iraq war. Then I was with the Mojahedin for 20 years. For 40 years I have seen no one in my family. For 30 years I had no contact with them, because in MEK there were rules, no one, no one was allowed to call their family.
I’ve spent 20 years of my life with MEK and after that, I live as a civilian today. For a long time I had realized how great a lie MEK was. I spent 5 months in jail under them and was under great physical and psychological pressure. I decided to leave the organization. Why am I accused of being a terrorist when I am living a free life? I have also given an interview to the German media.
I work here in Tirana, work in the duralum, do electrical work, paint houses. I work for a living. I work from 8am to 8pm. How can I be a terrorist. Here’s my hands, how can I commit terrorist acts once I’m back from work.
I was with MEK for 30 years, and I’ve been separated from MEK for a year and a half. I heard talk of news that we were accused of terrorism. In this organization everything we did was restricted. Even inside MEK the members were abused about this news, that we were terrorists and that we needed to be arrested.
Shqiptarja, translated by Iran Interlink
Reports on China ‘organ harvesting’ derive from front groups of far-right cult Falun Gong
A wave of corporate media reports on Chinese organ harvesting rely without acknowledgement on front groups connected to the far-right Falun Gong cult, whose followers believe “Trump was sent by heaven to destroy the Communist Party.”
Western corporate media outlets have gone wild with claims that the Chinese state is “harvesting” the organs of ethnic minorities and political opposition figures. But an investigation by The Grayzone has found that these allegations originate from front groups run by the far-right opposition cult Falun Gong.
Falun Gong, whose devotees can often be seen clad in yellow and performing coordinated qi gong routines in crowded city centers, runs an ultra-conservative, staunchly pro-Donald Trump media network that has been compared to Alex Jones’ Infowars.
According to a former member of the fringe religious group, Falun Gong believes that an apocalyptic judgement day is soon approaching and “that Trump was sent by heaven to destroy the [Chinese] Communist Party.”
In order to understand, then, how heavily politicized rumors from an obscure far-right cult found their way into the headlines, it is essential to trace the roots of the story through an elaborate network of front groups.
In June 2019, a London-based organization called the China Tribunal published a report claiming that the Chinese government has been systematically executing and harvesting the organs of members of Falun Gong, a leading force of opposition to Beijing in the diaspora.
The China Tribunal describes itself as an “independent tribunal into forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience in China.” Most Western journalists took the organization at its word.
Up to and after it published the report, the China Tribunal received scattered coverage from various mainstream media outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and The Guardian. In September, the coverage ramped up considerably after the China Tribunal presented its case to the UN Human Rights Council, with major outlets like The Independent and Reuters joining in.
One thing all this reporting has in common is that it assumes the China Tribunal is truly “independent.” On its website, the China Tribunal says that it was “initiated by the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China (ETAC), an international not for profit organisation, with headquarters in Australia and National Committees in the UK, USA, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.”
So what is ETAC, really?
On ETAC’s website, one finds a “management” page with a list of people, devoid of any information except their names, photographs, and positions in the organization. The executive director and co-founder is Susie Hughes; Margo MacVicar is named as the New Zealand national manager; Rebecca James is the UK national manager for outreach, and so on.
Where do these figures come from, and what brought them together? The website has no bios. But follow the names, and it soon becomes apparent that there is another connection apart from ETAC — the Epoch Times.
A far-right anti-China propaganda network run by a cult
The Epoch Times, which uses the slogan “Truth and Tradition,” has marketed itself as just another conservative, pro-Trump media outlet.
But NBC News published a major exposé in August revealing it to be the media arm of the opposition cult Falun Gong. The report details the bizarre workings of the Falun Gong organization, showing how the Epoch Times is carving a place for itself in American right-wing media.
NBC News found that the Falun Gong website spent more than $1.5 million on roughly 11,000 pro-Trump advertisements on Facebook in just six months, “more than any organization outside of the Trump campaign itself, and more than most Democratic presidential candidates have spent on their own campaigns.”
And while the NBC reporters, Brandy Zadrozny and Ben Collins, cautiously refer to Falun Gong as a “spiritual community,” the behavior they document very easily fits into the popular definition of “cult.” (It’s okay, Zadrozny and Collins, you can say it — say it with me: “Falun Gong is a cult.” Now doesn’t that feel better?)
A quick look at Falun Gong’s official emblem, posted on its website, should raise some eyebrows: it features an ancient swastika symbol. Falun Gong reassures skeptics on the web page, “Some people say: ‘This symbol looks like Hitler’s stuff.’ Let me tell you that this symbol itself does not connote any concepts of class.”
So where do the ETAC managers fit in with Falun Gong? Susie Hughes has photographer credits on several Epoch Times articles (her name seems to have been scrubbed, the photos merely credited to “The Epoch Times,” but the credit still shows up on Google searches at the time of writing). Margo MacVicar has numerous articles gushing about Shen Yun, Falun Gong’s traveling dance show. Rebecca “Becky” James shows up organizing a Falun Gong art exhibition in Bristol and sharing vegan drink recipes.
ETAC’s UK national manager for initiatives, Andy Moody, is credited by Epoch Times as a reporter for its sibling NTD, or New Tang Dynasty Television, Falun Gong’s TV arm. (Concerned Canadians have noted that the cult’s propaganda network has received millions of their tax dollars worth of disproportionate funding.)
ETAC’s UK communications coordinator Victoria Ledwidge appears in another Epoch Times article, coming to greet Shen Yun performers in London and, of course, acclaiming the “amazing” performance.
As one goes down the list of ETAC management, these Falun Gong connections spring up for almost everyone. ETAC is very clearly a Falun Gong front group.
Neither ETAC nor China Tribunal discloses these connections, but it hardly takes an intrepid investigative journalist to find them. So why was this level of basic research a step too far for, say, Owen Bowcott at the Guardian, who does little more than transmit ETAC’s talking points?
In fact, Falun Gong itself is actively spreading this “organ harvesting” rumor in major North American cities. The Grayzone’s Ben Norton saw some of the cult’s activists standing in central Toronto next to a giant banner titled “Stop Forced Live Organ Harvesting in China.”
They handed out pamphlets to passers-by declaring that the “Chinese Communist Regime Is Slaughtering Innocents” (using a painting as supposed evidence), while preaching about the “great health benefits” of Falun Gong.
The far-right cult is clearly using these rumors to proselytize and recruit new supporters.
‘Research’ overseen by a cult that sidelines real doctors
Turning to the China Tribunal’s report itself, it is apparent that, despite the authors’ claim to “have maintained distance and separation from ETAC in order to ensure their independence,” they rely heavily on information curated for them by ETAC.
The introduction, after describing ETAC as “a not-for-profit coalition of lawyers, medical professionals and others”, goes on to state that “ETAC’s main interest has been the alleged suffering of practitioners of ‘Falun Gong’, a group performing meditative exercises and pursuing Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance, but regarded by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) since 1999 as an ‘anti-humanitarian, anti-society and anti-science cult’.”
It is understandable that critics might hesitate to take the PRC’s characterization of Falun Gong at face value. But it is easy to make a fair evaluation of the group’s true character simply by perusing their own publications, where one will learn, for instance, that modern science was invented by aliens as part of a scheme to take over human bodies; or that feminism, environmentalism, and homosexuality are part of Satan’s plan to make us into communists; or that race-mixing severs our connection to the gods.
What Falun Gong means exactly when it preaches the timeless values of “truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance” is beyond this article’s scope. I leave it to the reader to judge how the above doctrines correspond to them.
The report summary goes on to state: “Evidence was submitted by ETAC for the first hearing, amplified by further evidence following the first and second evidence hearings.” So despite framing their investigation as separate and independent of ETAC, the authors admit that they began with evidence fed to them by ETAC.
Their reliance on ETAC is further highlighted later when several doctors are named who expressed skepticism about the Falun Gong organ harvesting narrative. These doctors are listed as “doctors speaking favourably of the PRC.”
The report then states:
“All of these doctors were invited by the Tribunal to participate in the Tribunal’s proceedings. Their participation would have greatly assisted the Tribunal in its work; they all declined the invitations. Further, although each did contribute in person to a recent report by an Australian Government Committee their contributions have been subject to review by ETAC that reveals that they produced no hard evidence to support what they said and could be criticised for their methodology or their experience in transplant surgery.”
In other words, the China Tribunal didn’t see any need to consider their testimony, because ETAC had already looked at it and declared it to be bogus.
One of these doctors, Francis Delmonico, was contacted by the science journal Nature for its article on the China Tribunal’s report — a rare case of a dissenting opinion being registered, however grudgingly.
Delmonico was asked specifically for his opinion on a research paper cited by the China Tribunal, which was published on the scientific archive, SocArXiv, by Matthew Robinson – a research fellow of the famously impartial Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation:
“But Francis Delmonico, a surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, says that although there is evidence that organs were taken from prisoners in the past — which he condemns — he is not convinced by the SocArXiv evidence because it is not direct. Delmonico is chair of the World Health Organization’s Task Force on Donation and Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues and has been supporting organ-donation reform in China for more than a decade, although he made his comments to Nature in a personal capacity.”
Lobbyists for an anti-Iran cult go to bat for an anti-China one
The China Tribunal’s report is not the first alleging that the Chinese government is murdering Falun Gong prisoners en masse to harvest their organs. It relies heavily on an earlier document, known as the Kilgour-Matas report, which was initially released in 2006 and updated several times since then, with the title “Bloody Harvest.”
This previous report was commissioned by the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong in China. Unlike ETAC, CIPFG plainly states that it is a Falun Gong organization.
More interesting connections arise when probing the backgrounds of the co-authors of the report, David Kilgour and David Matas.
David Matas is the senior legal counsel for B’nai Brith Canada, a right-wing pro-Israel lobby that works hard to tar any critique of the occupation of Palestine as anti-semitism. He was also a member of the Canadian government’s now-defunct Rights and Democracy board, in which capacity he lobbied on behalf of the Iranian opposition cult Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK), as part of an effort to remove the MEK from the Canadian and US lists of terrorist organizations — an effort that was eventually successful.
The Rights and Democracy board’s chairman, Aurel Braun, was also a strident MEK advocate, who promoted the cult as a replacement for Iran’s present government. Rights and Democracy eventually dissolved due in part to Braun’s and Matas’ relentless attacks on another board member for supposed contacts with Hezbollah and Hamas.
The MEK emerged in 1960s Iran, promoting a strange mixture of Marxism and Shia Islam, and supported the 1979 Revolution until the Mullahs turned against it. MeK leadership then fled to Europe, from which they launched a series of terrorist bombings. They simultaneously maintained a presence in Iraq, where they enjoyed Saddam Hussein’s patronage, massacred Kurds on his behalf, and even fought with his troops against their own country.
The MEK promote themselves, to anyone who will listen, as the Iranian opposition and the best democratic alternative to the present government — and politicians and think tanks seeking regime change in Iran readily indulge them, despite wide reports of their cult-like behavior.
In August 2019 Canada’s National Observer published a report about Canadian politicians who love the MEK. Prominently featured in the article is the other co-author of “Bloody Harvest,” David Kilgour, a former MP who is co-chair for “Canadian Friends of a Democratic Iran” and has been doing PR for the MEK for years.
So both authors of “Bloody Harvest” advocate on behalf of, not one, but two cults that also happen to be darlings of regime-change enthusiasts in and around Western governments. (The latest edition of “Bloody Harvest” includes a third co-author, Ethan Gutmann, who, notably, has been affiliated with the Gulf monarchy-funded Brookings Institution and the neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies.)
How does one unwind from all this hard shill work? David Kilgour makes a point of seeing Shen Yun’s dance performances year after year and effusing about it again and again and again to the Epoch Times.
A few reporters notice Falun Gong’s seamy side
In March, Jia Tolentino published her impressions of Shen Yun in the New Yorker. Like the aforementioned NBC piece on the Epoch Times, Tolentino ‘s article shows that more and more people are noticing that there is something very odd about Falun Gong.
From the “baroque and surreal” Shen Yun dance-propaganda show, which bills itself as a last bastion of genuine Chinese culture, she moves to consider some other very troubling aspects of the Falun Gong organization, such as their penchant for resisting journalistic inquiry and harassing critics.
Tolentino also mentions a 2017 Washington Post investigation by Simon Denyer, which, while hardly a pro-PRC puff piece, casts serious doubt on the claims of the Kilgour-Matas report on organ harvesting.
Denyer may be the only journalist in the mainstream US press who conducted an independent investigation on organ harvesting in China and seriously questions Falun Gong’s organ harvesting narrative. Naturally, Ethan Gutmann felt compelled to run a rebuttal to Denyer’s report on ETAC’s website — and one can only imagine the kinds of emails and phone calls Denyer has been getting since he dared to publish that piece.
For most of the Western corporate media, the “Bloody Harvest” horror story is too ghoulishly titillating to subject to serious scrutiny, especially when the “Yellow Peril”-style villain is an increasingly powerful state threatening the old hegemonies.
Additional reporting by The Grayzone’s Ben Norton
Ryan McCarthy, thegrayzone.com
Ryan McCarthy is a US-based writer and activist
Trump, Iran’s Rouhani descend on same corner of New York but remain far apart
After months of lobbing threats and vowing military reprisals, President Trump will find himself on the same block of midtown Manhattan as Iranian President Hassan Rouhani this week at the annual U.N. General Assembly.
At times, Trump has flirted with the idea of meeting with Rouhani for a historic tete-a-tete, only to retreat to a position of imposing tougher economic sanctions.
Trump’s top advisers privately opposed such a meeting and appeared to win that debate after an attack on Saudi oil facilities Sept. 14 prompted the United States to impose more sanctions on Tehran. But Trump has not ruled anything out.
“Nothing is ever off the table completely, but I have no intention of meeting with Iran, and that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen,” the president told reporters Sunday on the South Lawn of the White House. “I’m a very flexible person.”
Even if Trump changed his mind and extended an invitation, however, it is far from clear that Rouhani would accept, something critics attribute to the Trump administration’s mixed messages.
Trump has tried to appeal to Tehran in various statements, ruling out regime change and entertaining a French plan to extend a line of credit to Iran to return to the 2015 nuclear deal the United States withdrew from last year. But the president’s hawkish advisers have taken a tougher posture: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Sunday that Iran is “bloodthirsty and looking for war,” and his diplomats did little to help facilitate a meeting in the run-up to the General Assembly, said U.S. officials, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal operations.
On Wednesday, Pompeo is scheduled to speak at an event hosted by Iran hawk and former diplomat Mark Wallace, who has drawn criticism for including a fringe Iranian diaspora group, Mujahideen-e Khalq, or MEK, in his programming surrounding the U.N. gathering.
Until 2012, the MEK was listed as a foreign terrorist organization by the United States for allegedly killing U.S. personnel in Iran in the 1970s and for its links to Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. It is largely reviled inside Iran because of its alliance with Baghdad during the Iran-Iraq war. It is participating in a dissident convention hosted by Wallace a day before Pompeo’s speech at the Iran summit.
Analysts said Pompeo’s involvement in Wallace’s event risks confusing Trump’s declaration last month that “we’re not looking for leadership change.”
“This is an extremely unwise and dangerous decision,” said Dalia Dassa Kaye, director of the center for Middle East public policy at the Rand Corp.
“The message this will send is that regime change is still in the mix despite the president’s statements to the contrary,” she said. “There’s already confusion about U.S. aims on Iran, so this will only raise more questions about what the U.S. has been trying to achieve since its withdrawal from the nuclear agreement.”
An Iran scholar scheduled to speak at the same event as Pompeo has dropped out because of the MEK’s involvement in the event Wallace is hosting Tuesday.
Suzanne Maloney of the Brookings Institution said in a statement to The Washington Post that she “would never knowingly engage with the Mujahideen-e Khalq, a cultlike terrorist organization that is despised by many Iranians.”
“Although the summit and the diaspora event will be held on separate days, the overlap in the sponsorship of the two events was too close for my comfort,” she said.
Pompeo has previously distanced himself from the group when asked about the attendance of Trump attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani and then-national security adviser John Bolton at MEK events. The group offers generous speaking fees and has cultivated close connections in Washington among Democrats and Republicans, including to former senator Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) and former Vermont governor Howard Dean (D).
“Let’s not beat around the bush,” Pompeo reportedly said during a meeting with Iranian American leaders in April. “Ambassador Bolton spoke at an MEK rally. President Trump and I have not.”
A senior State Department official dismissed the concerns about the MEK’s participation in Wallace’s event, saying, “Have you looked at the people attending the U.N.?”
When asked about his decision to include the MEK, a spokesman for Wallace said he “decided early on that the convention will not discriminate or make value judgments on participation.”
His spokesman, Joshua Silberberg, added that Wallace’s organization, United Against Nuclear Iran, “admires Suzanne Maloney and respects her decision about participating in the Iran summit on Wednesday, which is an unrelated event.”
Ali Safavi, an official with the National Council of Resistance of Iran, which speaks for the MEK, said Maloney “has no credibility whatsoever to comment on the MEK.”
As diplomats from around the world streamed into New York for the United Nations’ 74th annual General Assembly, Pompeo and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif continued to trade barbs.
Pompeo, going further than Trump in assigning blame for the attack on Saudi Arabia, said, “This was an attack by Iran on the world.”
“We’re looking for a diplomatic resolution to this, unlike the Iranians,” he told CBS.
Unlike Pompeo, Trump has not directly blamed the country for the assault, saying last week that “as soon as we find out definitively, we’ll let you know.”
Trump did, however, approve new sanctions on Iran’s state bank Friday and signed off on a new deployment of U.S. troops to the Middle East to enhance Saudi Arabia’s air defenses.
With those moves, Iran’s foreign minister told reporters that Trump “knowingly or unknowingly on Friday closed the door to negotiations.”
“I think it’s all going the wrong direction in addressing this issue,” Zarif told CBS on Sunday. “I don’t think this type of posturing helps.”
U.S. officials said the Trump administration would try to build a coalition to denounce Iran’s activities in the Middle East this week. Rebels in Yemen, known as Houthis, took responsibility for the strike on Saudi oil facilities, but Pompeo and Saudi Arabia have said the militants do not possess the type of drone and cruise missile weaponry used in the attack. Even some Democrats reluctant to embrace Trump’s messaging have rejected Iran’s denial of involvement, including former secretary of state John F. Kerry, who said Iran was responsible “one way or the other.”
In an acknowledgment of the worsening tensions, France’s top diplomat, who has tried to broker a meeting between Rouhani and Trump, said it was now more important to de-escalate the “dangerous” situation rather than set up a meeting between the two governments.
“What is at stake during this week is whether or not we can carry on with this de-escalation process,” Jean-Yves Le Drian said.
Carol Morello contributed to this report.
John Hudson,
WHO is the Marxist, Jihadist Cult That Is Fooling MAGA On Iran Policy?
You are watching a compilation of videos about the MEK, a Marxist,Jihadist cult supported by politicians across the political spectrum , Democrats and Republicans.
Democrats like Jefferey Epstein associate Bill Richardson and Sen. Joe Liberman support the MEK.
Recently, I came across a website by the name of Organization of Iranian American communities or (OIAC). Its mission statement says: “OIAC works to promote human rights and democratic freedoms for the people of Iran. This includes advocating for a democratic secular government in Iran, founded on respect for human rights, religious tolerance, and equality among all citizens.” Nothing could be further from the truth.
Well, it appears OIAC or better known as the MEK is following in the footsteps of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), an influential IRI lobby in Washington, DC, one which has long sought rapprochement between Washington and Tehran and has infiltrated the US Congress promoting Iran’s Mullahs agenda while claiming “NIAC promotes an active and engaged Iranian-American community in the US and celebrates the community’s deep historical and cultural roots and traditions.” Pure garbage.
Hassan Dai , an Iranian activist and political analyst in an OP-ED slammed this despised and deceptive group that has used the White House (during the Obama administration) to advance The Islamic Republic’s agenda.
OIAC or MEK is an Islamist-Marxist cultish group headed by Maryam Rajavi, the wife of the deceased co-founder of MEK, Massoud Rajavi. During the 1970’s they rebelled against the Shah and were involved in bombing and shooting American and Iranian targets. The MEK or (OIAC) executed U.S. Army Lt. Col. Lewis Hawkins in 1973 as he was walking home from the U.S. Embassy and in 1975 killed two American Air Force officers in their chauffeur driven car, an incident that was studied and used in CIA training subsequently as an example of how not to get caught and killed by terrorists. Between 1976 and 1978, the group bombed American commercial targets and killed three Rockwell defense contractors and one Texaco executive
Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) is known for its cultish Foreign Terrorist Organizations and represents a critical threat to Iran’s indigenous democratic movement. Unlike Iran’s democratic opposition, which advances through nonviolence, the principles of democracy and human rights, the MEK is an undemocratic organization that pursues its agenda through violence.
Michael Rubin, penned an Op-Ed stating: The Mujahidin e-Khalq Aren’t America’s Friends.
“The Trump administration, however, is reportedly reconsidering the pariah status of the MEK within U.S. diplomacy. Barbara Slavin, an American analyst often apologetic to the Islamic Republic, reports that “US administration talking points no longer exclude the Mujahidin-e Khalq as a potential replacement for the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran.” While there remains a great difference between “refuses to exclude” and “supports,” Slavin is correct to raise concern.”
Houston, we have a problem. The MEK cult was listed as a terrorist group in the US until 2012 – but its opposition to Tehran has attracted the backing of John Bolton, Rudy Giuliani and others bent on regime change.
After the American invasion of Iraq, Maryam fled to France. Her headquarters in Auver sur d’oise in the suburb of Paris was raided by the French Police in June 2003. She was placed under arrest together with 160 of the group members and the assets of the MEK were frozen by the French judiciary. The Police seized millions of dollars from the group’s headquarters. The group was accused of preparing to commit or finance acts of terrorism and money laundering.
A dozen diehard supporters of the Cult of Rajavi set themselves on fire to protest the arrest of Maryam. Two women were killed eventually.
French Police released the cult leader to stop the horrible scenes of self-immolations in European capitals. In France, Maryam became the administrator of Massoud’s office. The close relationship between Maryam and Massoud in the office led to their dramatic marriage in 1985 immediately after her divorce from Medi Abrishamchi. The marriage was celebrated as an ideological revolution in the history of the group. Maryam Rajavi was named the co-leader of the MEK.
Maryam Rajavi is highly admired by America’s mayor, Rudy Giuliani. For years, Giuliani has been one of the most prominent American officials to advocate on behalf of the MEK, a Marxist Iranian opposition group that claims to be the legitimate government of Iran and more resembles a cult.
Giuliani went so far as to call Maryam Rajavi a heroic woman. He twittered: “2018 Iran Uprising Summit #FREEIRAN2018 is focused on the uprising in Iran posing an alternative to the homicidal regime. The regime has announced that the MEK is the only organization that can realistically replace them. The movement is led by Maryam Rajavi, a heroic woman.”
[..]Like her deceased husband, she [Maryam Rajavi] is extremely narcissistic and an Islamist-Marxist fanatic. If she ever grabs the power in Iran, the first thing she would do is to eliminate the opposition and use the mass media to brainwash the people just as the MEK has done to their handful of followers. They will create a Stalinist dictatorship that would make both Iranians and Westerners nostalgic for the mullahs. Don’t do it!
BY AMIL IMANI- PipeLineNews,
Certain Trump administration officials favor the US government supporting the MEK, an Iranian opposition group exiled in Albania. Yet a look at the MEK’s history paints a disturbing picture that should give officials in Washington major concerns about any plans for enhancing US cooperation with the organization.
The People’s Mujahedin of Iran, or Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), has a dark history of violence and acts of terrorism against American interests. Established in the 1960s, the Marxist-Islamist group killed members of the Shah’s security apparatus on the streets of Iranian cities. Anti-American to its core, the MEK quickly earned a negative reputation in Washington for killing six US citizens, and for targeting American-owned hotels, airlines, and energy companies in Iran. The lyrics from an MEK song illustrate the vitriol which the organization held for the US during its early years: “Death to America by blood and bonfire on the lips of every Muslim is the cry of the Iranian people.”
The revolutionary student-led group played an important role in the Shah’s 1979 ouster. However, after Ayatollah Khomeini’s ascendancy and the Islamic Republic’s consolidation of power, Khomeini and his loyalists refused to share power with their former ally and began to crackdown on MEK protests. MEK responded by accusing Khomeini’s loyalists of monopolizing power, and then resorted to acts of violence and terrorism, including the bombing of the Office of the Prime Minister, killing both President Mohammad-Ali Rajai and Prime Minister Mohammad Javad Bahonar.
Having been forced to take refuge in Iraq under Saddam Hussein’s protection, the MEK sided with Baghdad in the eight-year conflict with Iran. In 1986, Saddam Hussein provided the MEK with a military base at Camp Ashraf, located 50 miles from the Iranian border. From there, the organization waged attacks in Iran with arms provided by the Iraqi government. Immediately after the implementation of the ceasefire between Iran and Iraq in 1988, roughly 7,000 Iraqi-backed MEK fighters launched Operation Forugh-e Javidan (Eternal Light) aiming to oust the regime in Tehran, only to be crushed in a counter-offensive days later by Iranian forces. In 1999, the MEK took its revenge by assassinating Lieutenant General Ali Sayyad-Shirazi, Deputy Chief of Iranian Armed Forces Chief of Staff, who had suppressed the MEK’s incursion.
As part of its overture to Iran, former President Bill Clinton’s administration designated the MEK a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO). In 2002, when President George W. Bush was seeking to build up international support for his plans to invade Iraq, he cited Saddam Hussein’s record of sponsoring “terrorist organizations that direct violence against Iran, Israel, and Western governments”, a tacit reference to Baghdad’s patronage of the MEK. Meanwhile, in the post-Saddam environment, more figures in the US government began to view the MEK as a tool to pressure the Islamic Republic. As such, the US military began secretly training the MEK in Nevada. “We did train them here, and washed them through the Energy Department because the Department of Energy owns all this land in southern Nevada,” a former senior US intelligence official told investigative journalist Seymour Hersh.
In Baghdad however, the Shi’a government no longer welcomed MEK’s presence in Iraq, and tacitly allowed the Iranian military to attack MEK’s base on its territory. By 2012, when it became clear that the MEK had no security in Iraq, the Obama administration, under much pressure from well-funded lobbyists, removed the group from the State Department’s FTO list. Meanwhile, the US government reached a secret deal that would relocate roughly 3,000 MEK members from Iraq, where they no longer had security, to Albania. As one former US diplomat involved in the deal explained, the relocation agreement had to be done secretly given the extent to which many government officials in France, Iraq, and Iran would have objected had they been aware of it at the time.
How has a Marxist-Islamist group that defined itself based on an ideology hostile to America gained popularity in Washington?
As the MEK openly calls for the overthrow of the Iranian government, and the recognition of Maryam Rajavi (the wife of MEK’s founder) as Iran’s next leader, the group has garnered strong support from Trump administration officials. But how, one must ask, has a Marxist-Islamist group that defined itself based on an ideology hostile to America gained popularity in Washington?
MEK’s role in exposing Iran’s nuclear activities during the early 2000s, gained the support of DC, where some officials unwisely began seeing it as a force capable of leading Iran into a post-Islamic Republic. Credible reports further suggest that MEK has paid handsome speaking fees to US officials for their appearance. Addressing MEK’s “Free Iran” conference in 2017, National Security Advisor John Bolton proclaimed that “the only solution is to change the [Iranian] regime itself.” Bolton also predicted that before 2019 “we here will celebrate in Tehran.” In January 2019, Ayatollah Khamenei, told a Qom audience that “… one of the US politicians [Bolton] said that he hopes and wishes to celebrate this year’s Christmas in Tehran. Christmas celebration was a few days ago… they are truly first-class idiots.”
Vagueness and a lack of transparency surround the MEK’s source(s) of funding. Numerous investigative journalists in Albania have explored this question. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia shows support for the MEK politically, yet there is no solid evidence to back up the common assumption that the Saudi government finances the group.
The Regime Change Debate
Fortunately for Tehran, opposition to the Islamic Republic has been fragmented. Deep divisions between various opposing factions—including the MEK, monarchists, and various non-Persian ethnic minorities —have thwarted the establishment of any unified opposition. As the Middle East expert Borzou Daragahi recently explained, a common perception among Iran’s ethnic minorities is that for all their reasons to loathe the Islamic Republic regime, both the MEK and the monarchists would be more hostile to them than their ruling government.
Daragahi also noted that officials in Tehran do not perceive the MEK as a grave threat to the regime’s survival, using it instead as a prop to persuade more Iranians that the “opposition” is dark and beholden to hostile foreign powers targeting Iran since 1979.
False Identities Become the New Weapon: War with Iran Promoted by Fake Journalists
Realistically, the MEK lacks any means to mobilize support in Iran for an overthrow of the regime. Furthermore, if there is one thing that unites all Iranians of different affiliations, it is the loathing for a cult that sided with Iraq during its war against their homeland. But for American and British officials who vocally support it, public displays of solidarity with the MEK serve to enrage Iran’s government. They, on the other hand, continue to isolate the country politically and depress its economy through comprehensive sanctions. However, beyond angering those in power in Tehran, it is not clear what the US could achieve by providing more support to the MEK.
Notwithstanding objections to the MEK on moral grounds, it makes little sense to sponsor an organization that is struggling to survive, and has no support within the Iranian population. Since relocating to Albania, approximately 1,000 MEK members have left the group’s base outside of Tirana. The MEK later accused 40 of its former members, who subsequently held protests against it in Albania’s capital, of being “agents of the Iranian regime.” Hence, it is difficult to imagine a group, which still castigates its defecting members, successfully orchestrating a regime change in Iran, let alone one that is coordinated from southeastern Europe.
Shrouded in secrecy and controversy while harmed by global media reports about its conduct in Albania, the MEK has justified its reputation as a cult organization. After the disappearance of her husband Massoud, the 65-year-old Maryam Rajavi has been living in a delusional dream that one day she and her “followers” will march on Tehran to lead a revolution that ends the Islamic Republic. More realistically, MEK’s supporters in Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the US, will continue heaping praise on the group and support its formal and social media campaigns, which align with their anti-Iran agendas.
Yet none of the actors that want to see the Iranian regime fall should have any reason to believe that the MEK is a reliable actor capable of bringing about the desired outcome. It seems though that they all have reached the conclusion that supporting the MEK can be an effective tool to harass the Islamic Republic and use the group that the State Department once had on its FTO list as a bargaining tool. Nevertheless, Washington policy makers should keep in mind that regardless of the fate of the Islamic Republic, the widely despised MEK will have no political future in Iran.
by Giorgio Cafiero – insidearabia.com
Stephen Harper speaks at conference held at ‘cult’ Iranian dissident group’s Albanian compound
For a second straight year, former prime minister Stephen Harper spoke at a conference organized by the MEK, a controversial Iranian dissident group that his government once labelled a terrorist organization and has been described as a cult.
Harper, who has been a vocal critic of the Iranian regime during and after his time as prime minister, gave a speech at the Free Iran conference on July 13. This year’s gathering was held at the MEK’s newly-built headquarters located in rural Albania.
“I am delighted to be here, because there are a few causes in this world today more important, at this moment, than what you are pursuing: the right of the people of Iran to change their government and their right to do it through freedom and the power of the ballot box,” he said, to applause from the audience.
The conference was organized by the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), a group founded by the MEK, which aims to topple the current theocratic regime in power since the Iranian revolution. The council calls itself “an inclusive and pluralistic parliament-in-exile.”
According to the Guardian, the MEK’s new headquarters is located in a rural fenced-off hillside compound outside Albania’s capital of Tirana. It’s where more than 2,000 of its members live.
The well-funded and well-organized MEK, also known as the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran, has received the backing of numerous high-profile politicians in the West.
For example, U.S. President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, spoke at the conference and called for the overthrow of the clerical regime. Former Democratic senator Joe Lieberman and British Tory MP Matthew Offord also participated.
Members of Trump’s inner circle, including his national security adviser John Bolton, have also spoken in favour of the group and its mission.
Harper’s former foreign affairs minister John Baird was also a speaker at the event. Former B.C. Conservative MP Paul Forseth also spoke.
Conservative figures calling for a regime change have increasingly offered support in recent years, but Liberals, such as Irwin Cotler, David Kilgour and Judy Sgro, have also publicly supported MEK.
While the 50-year history of the organization is long and complicated, the MEK has been criticized more recently as a cult.
According to a 2009 RAND Corporation analysis, the MEK turned toward cultlike practices after its leadership relocated to Paris in the mid 1980s. It included engaging in “near-religious devotion” to the married Massoud and Maryam Rajavi.
Its members were said to engage in “public self-deprecation sessions, mandatory divorce, celibacy, enforced separation from family and friends, and gender segregation” — allegations reinforced by independent reporting over the years.
Massoud disappeared during the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, where the MEK was based for years with the support of Saddam Hussein, but Maryam Rajavi has continued to represent the MEK.
Rajavi is now the “president-elect” of the NCRI. According to the council’s website, she will hold the position for “the provisional period for transfer of power to the people.”
In his speech, Harper endorses Rajavi’s 10-point plan for a post-clerical Iran, calling it “the future the world wants.”
The plan includes universal suffrage, political freedom, ending the death penalty, secular governance, equality, an independent judiciary, upholding human rights, installing a capitalist economy, promoting regional peace and establishing a non-nuclear Iran.
Thomas Juneau, a Middle East expert at the University of Ottawa, said while the group bills itself as a “viable democratic opposition to the Islamic Republic,” that’s far from the truth.
“It is a violent, thuggish, corrupt cult,” he said. “It’s also a movement that has absolutely no support inside Iran.”
“For Canadian politicians, serving or retired, to endorse the MEK and by attending the event … that should not be acceptable.”
Juneau, who took to Twitter over the weekend to criticize Harper, said supporting an “undemocratic” leader like Rajavi does a “disservice” to the actual cause of democracy in Iran.
Harper was criticized last year for speaking at an MEK-sponsored conference in Paris.
Juneau also noted independent reporting has shown the MEK runs a “slick propaganda machine” and handsomely pays speakers to support their cause.
The Guardian recently spoke to men in Tirana who had fled the MEK compound over the last two years, where they said life inside the camp was of a “cultlike atmosphere” in which mobile phones and contact with relatives, and between men and women, were prohibited.
Members were also required to spend days sitting at computers flooding the internet with messages in support of the MEK.
Iran’s Mohajedeen e Khalq: MEK Money Sure Can’t Buy Love But it can buy a lot of politicians
Questions from iPolitics sent to Harper’s office on Monday via his website, including whether he was paid by the MEK to speak at the event, were not met with a response.
Until 2012, the U.S. and Canada designated the MEK as a terrorist entity. The group was once an armed faction, carrying out assassinations of Iran regime figures, but now supports propping up a secular government via non-violent means.
For much of his speech, Harper called for countries to take a harder line on the ayatollah’s regime.
“The right policy, the only realistic policy is to impose sanctions, boycott, designate institutions as terrorist organizations and do what my government did in Canada: close down the regime’s embassies around the world,” he said.
“Weakness and appeasement will not avoid a military confrontation with this regime.”
Juneau said he believes political figures such as Harper know of MEK’s reputation but want to be seen as taking a hard line on the Iran regime through a controversial, but well-organized group.
“It’s opportunism in the most cynical way possible.”
ipolitics.ca