Blacklisting MEK is a License for Massacre in Iran and Iraq

“No American President wants to see our values tarnished such as we saw in April 2011 and no President wants to go into election with blood on his hands”
General General James Conway, Commandant of the US Marine Corps (2006-2010)

The New York Times published an article by Scott Shane in which ‘anonymous’ state department officials once again “pop-up” to hatch new conspiracies against the MEK (PMOI), the Iranian pro-democracy opposition to the mullahs in Iran. Apart from the hot-air and flawed arguments which sharply contradict official UN reports, realities on the ground have a more rational advice: One should not go above the law and act as tyrants would expect. It is beneath US values to be entrapped in Tehran’s scenario.

Facts contradict FLAWS:

The article highlights “the groups’ refusal to relocate” but fails to shed light on reasons for the deadlock. This will no doubt leave the blame on the MEK, unless readers compare a list of more than 100 breaches of agreement, harassments and looting carried out by the Iraqi government, as well as engineered plots to dismantle the group, under US-UN auspicious.

Many reports have been released by the wikileaks and recently by the Iranian resistance that revealed complicated plots by Iranian Intelligence and directive involving foreign embassy staff and lately the UNAMI chief Martin Kobler, to make life hard for the dissidents in both camps in order to stop their opposition against Tehran.

The article blames the victims for being victimized while whitewashing two bloody massacres by the Maliki government condemned in the Spanish Court of justice as crime against humanity and writes: both American and United Nations officials have urged the group to complete the move to avoid further violence.

It is true to say that when one's enemy (Tehran) becomes one's Savior, our paradigm shifts. We lose our sense of direction and morality; the good become the bad and victims become villains. Under all this bravado the ‘anonymous’ State Department ‘tippers’ would blame the coming massacre on the defense less refugees who are ‘protected persons’ and should be secured by the US under R2P laws.

True intention of the article is not so obscure as the two ‘anonymous’ State Department officials diffuse annoying antics that lead readers to assume the situation at both camps is “heavens on earth” with more than enough “video-games and sodas” to last all 3400 residents a lifetime.

The reality is besmirched, and conditions are greatly inhumane:

• The Maliki government has breached the agreement it signed without the consent of the residents with the UN.

• On August 10, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention’s official report classified “Liberty," where 200 MEK members relocated out of good will gesture to pressures by the US-UN, as a ‘detention centre’ and not a refugee camp. It is therefore, careless of the State Department officials to believe that vociferous pranks could shade over realities.

• On August 10, UN rights experts warned of 'massacre' in Iraq's Ashraf camp.

• Family members of Ashraf residents are being persecuted and on the verge of death because of the US Black listing that provides the best alibi for the increasing violence towards MEK prisoners of conscience.

• Unlike claimed “comfort” in Ashraf and Liberty, the Iraqi government is at logger heads with each request of the residents. Dubious tactics are to frame the residents for the blame. Therefore, while US-UN observers are present; the Iraqi counterpart valiantly accepts some of the requirements that abide the red lines defined by Tehran. After the agreement, Iraqi officers controlling the camp provided splitting-hair excuses that exhaust the residents and practically make it impossible to retract the agreed needs.

• There are immoral and inhumane sides to the Iraqi degrading treatment of the residents; corps of some of the deceased residents has not been allowed to be buried, as part of a psychological campaign to demoralize the residents.

It is therefore, a tragic irony and bitter immorality that the US State department wishes to enchain MEK, not because the camps are ‘paramilitary’ but because the residents are fighting for their privileged rights: generators, refrigerators and the right to stay safe.

It is time for Mrs. Clinton to do what is right and just and not what the ‘job’ would require. We can write history on both the dark side and the bright side.

De-list the MEK before thousands of our families and relatives are victimized.

Mahin Saremi is a former political prisoner who escaped from Iran last year, one of the active organizers of the 2009 protests in Iran and activist has recently entered the realm of freelance writers. Her articles have been published since she escaped from Iran.

© Scoop Media