People's Mujahedin of Iran - MEK's Human Rights Record

MEK's Human Rights Record

In May 2005, Human Rights Watch issued a report describing prison camps within Iraq run by the MEK and severe human rights violations committed by the group against former members. that was described in a May 18, 2005 article in Newsweek magazine.

The report described how the MEK was held under tight control of the husband and wife team of Massoud and Maryam Rajavi and has a history of cult-like practices that include forcing members to divorce their spouses and to engage in extended self-criticism sessions.

More dramatically, the report states that former MEK members told Human Rights Watch of being arrested, in some cases violently abused and in other instances imprisoned, when they protested MEK policies or tried to leave the organization. They were held in solitary confinement for years in a camp operated by MEK in Iraq under the protection of Saddam Hussein. MEK representatives in the United States and France, where MEK is headquartered, did not respond to Newsweeks phone calls and an email requesting comment.

Following the 1988 military defeat by the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Rajavi's leadership of MEK became increasingly authoritarian and cultlike, according to the report. One MEK defector's memoir indicated that Rajavi claimed to have a mystical relationship with a prophet known as Imam Zaman, (the Mahdi or Twelfth Imam of Shia Islam). In order to better cement their relationship with their leader, and hence ultimately their Messiah, Rajavi then instructed his followers to divorce their spouses. The group had already established a practice of self criticism, under which members were asked to undergo their own personal "ideological revolution" by confessing personal inadequacies in cultlike confession sessions. Human Rights Watch stated that the testimony of former MEK prisoners paints a grim picture of how the organization treated its members, particularly those who held dissenting opinions or expressed an intent to leave the organization. Other witnesses told Human Rights Watch claimed it was the practice of MEK interrogators to tie thick ropes around prisoners necks and drag them along the ground. One witness told investigators: "Sometimes prisoners returned to the cell with extremely swollen necks — their head and neck as big as a pillow." In a statement accompanying its investigative report, Joe Stork, a Human Rights Watch expert on the Middle East, commented:

The report prompted a response by the MEK and a few friendly European MPs, who published a counter-report in September 2005. They stated that HRW had "relied only on 12 hours interviews with 12 suspicious individuals", and stated that "a delegation of MEPs visited Camp Ashraf in Iraq" and "conducted impromptu inspections of the sites of alleged abuses." Alejo Vidal-Quadras Roca (PP), one of the Vice-Presidents of the European Parliament, alleged that Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) was the source of the evidence against the MEK.

Prompted by the FOFI document, Human Rights Watch re-interviewed all 12 of the original witnesses, conducting private and personal interviews lasting several hours with each of them in Germany and the Netherlands, where the witnesses now live. All of the witnesses restated their claims about the MEK camps from the 1991–2003 period, saying MEK officials subjected them to various forms of physical and psychological abuses once they made known their wishes to leave the organization.

According to Mohsen Kadivar and Ahmad Sadri writing Salon.com,

Countless first-rate analysts, scholars and human rights organizations – including Human Rights Watch – have determined that the MEK is an undemocratic, cultlike organization whose modus operandi vitiates its claim to be a vehicle for democratic change.

In an interview with RFERL escaped MEK leader Abdul Latif Shardouri (aka Abdollatif Shadvari) who said he had been in the MEK for 25 years stated that his family thought he was dead because he had had no contact with them during those 25 years. "Using the telephone, mobile phone, Internet, and even listening to radio is forbidden in the organization."

The issue is, as Rajavi has said many times, whoever wants to escape from Ashraf will be punished with death and execution. Not only me, but many of my friends who are now in Ashraf don't have the possibility to leave the camp. Escape is the only way.