Stop Fundamentalism, 16 August 2011 – Agencies reported on Monday that a two year old girl was among 31 killed in the city of Latakia when Syrian army engaged civilian anti-government protests. She was one of three children who lost their lives in Monday clashes.
Reports also indicate that 42 were also killed on Sunday in Syria by the army in Latakia. Despite heavy and bloody crackdown people took to the streets on Sunday night to demonstrate.
Amir Naderi
A recent opinion piece by Elizabeth Rubin of the New York Times Magazine about the Iranian democratic opposition, Mujahedin-e Khalq (PMOI/MEK), is a great case study in “yellow Journalism”. Short on facts and credible sources, the piece is filled with cheap and sensationalist shots at the group and its 3400 members in Camp Ashraf, Iraq. It is a shameful attempt at “journalistic assassination” of the group, complementing what Iran rulers and their Iraqi proxies are doing to the MEK members and sympathizers through executions and military raids.
The seed of this article, as she alludes to it in her first paragraph, is planted by the usual suspects of Tehran’s Washington-based anti-MEK lobby. The obvious propose of the piece is to persuade the State Department to ignore the growing calls from US Congress and a bi-partisan array of US national security and policy luminaries to remove the group from the Department’s terrorism list. It attempts to achieve this objective by leveling a barrage of lies and IRGC-manufactured fabrications against the MEK, its leadership, and its members.
Like other hysteric opponents of the MEK de-listing, Rubin opts to ignore volumes of opinions issued by high courts in United Kingdom and the European Union which found the group “not concerned in terrorism” and described its continued blacklisting as “perverse.” The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has also found the designation a violation of due process and remanded it back to State Department for lawful review, strongly suggesting the MEK must be delisted. Rubin conveniently omits what she had said back in 2003 that “the group is also on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations, placed there in 1997 as a goodwill gesture toward Iran’s newly elected reform-minded president, Mohammad Khatami.”
Saeedreza Jahromi:
On April 8, 2011, Iraqi forces raided Camp Ashraf, killing 36 residents and wounding 345 others. The scenes of this inhumane act shocked the world. Waves of condemnation by the politicians and others were momentous.
Camp Ashraf is home to 3,400 members of Iran’s main opposition, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK). Many of the residents were political prisoners in Iran who survived years of captivity and sought refuge in Iraq before being re-arrested and executed. Some 1,000 of the Ashraf residents are women.
Saeedreza Jahromi:
The truth behind the statement supposedly written by 37 experts on Iran advocating for the continued black listing of the Iranian opposition group MEK by the U.S. State Department.
In recent days a statement supposedly written by a group of 37 experts on Iran (from 6 countries including Iran, Scotland, England, Canada and US) has surfaced on the cyberspace. The statement itself is a repeat of many recent articles and declarations by NIAC and its president Trita Parsi, who have embarked on a hysteric campaign against the People’s Mojahedin of Iran (PMOI or MEK). In the statement, the “experts” advocate for continued black listing of the MEK by the State Department.
Hamid Yaz
In recent weeks, the Iranian American Community of Northern California has been hosting a number of symposiums in Washington shedding light on the need to remove the Iran’s principal opposition movement, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (PMOI/MEK).
These events which feature senior officials from a number of previous administrations, with various backgrounds, ideologies, and areas of expertise are calling on the Obama Administration to change its policy in regards to the MEK, and remove them from the FTO. In response, the National Iranian American Council has launched a full-fledged campaign opposing the de-listing of the MEK, complete with an entire section on their web site dedicated to the issue, and even “tweeting” about it non-stop. Is this really the biggest issue on the table for Iranian Americans? And if so whose side is NIAC on?
Rob writer:
Tehran hates the message so is now shooting the messengers. Cronies of the Iranian dictatorship have claimed that the many high-profile US and EU public figures speaking out over the plight of the disarmed Mujahidin-e Khalq Organisation of Iran (MEK/PMOI) – living at Camp Ashraf in north east Iraq – are doing so just because they are on its payroll.
Or is a less cynical explanation more likely to be the case? That these figures are attempting to avoid the humanitarian catastrophe that would result if a US plan to relocate the 3,400 residents deeper inside Iraq goes ahead, placing them at risk of further harassment and attack by Iraqi military in league with Tehran.
To claim that US figures such as including former homeland security secretary Tom Ridge, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, and former congressman Patrick Kennedy are on some sort of pay-for-hire basis for an organisation still listed by the US as “terrorist” is extremely derogatory to people of their reputations and standing. It is merely saying that they are open to being bribed, and in a highly blatant fashion. This is unacceptable propaganda and the National Iranian American Council should hang its head in shame.
Carolyn Beckingham
I don’t claim to know much about American law, but under British law I think that some of Ambassador Butler’s comments on the American supporters of the People’s Muhahedeen of Iran/Mujahedeen-e-Khalk (PMOI/MeK) would count as libel.
Stop Fundamentalism, 5 August 2011 – According to human rights watch groups in Iran, a political prisoner by the name of Afshin Baimani is losing his sight, undergoing severe torture.
Baimani has been sentenced to life in prison for political activities and currently is in solitary for writing a letter to the UN Iran Special Human Rights Rapporteur exposing treatment of prisoners in Iranian jails.
Kambiz Assai:
The National Iranian American Council (NIAC) has organized a conference today Thursday August 4 to discuss why the US must continue to hamper and tie down the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), the main Iranian opposition movement, by inclusion in its Foreign Terrorist Organizations list (FTO).
For months now NIAC has been engaged in a very costly campaign to force the US State Department to refrain from removing the MEK from the FTO list. They have even setup a separate website entirely dedicated to propaganda video clips and material to demonize the MEK and misinform the public.
That NIAC has links with the Iranian regime is not a secret to anyone. Documents on its current president, Trita Parsi’s email exchanges with the Iranian ambassador in New York, and its six digit invoices to Iranian authorities for “Consultation” to broker deals with the US on illusionary grounds has been well known for a while now. NIAC’s policy positions and lobbying for the Iran regime are also well known in trying to find someone in the regime that will negotiate with the US all the time.
Kambiz Assai:
The MEK/PMOI (Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization) the prime opposition to the Iran regime, has been kept in the US State Department’s Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) list for more than a decade now.
This is a subject that has been much debated recently in many hearings in the US House of Representatives. It is thus, certainly worth to know who benefits and who loses from keeping the MEK in the FTO list.
What is crystal clear is that the Iran government is following and lobbying the matter with all that it has. It seems that Iran mullahs simply cannot afford to have the MEK removed from the FTO.
The fact is that the despotic rulers of Iran are right to be fearful. They have seen the massive demonstrations in the streets of Iranian cities nationwide two years ago, as well as the events sweeping through Libya and Syria. The mullahs want to protect themselves from a similar upcoming destiny.
