Iran: Propaganda Against PMOI/MEK, Focusing on the 1980s

NCRI - In response to the widespread justice-seeking campaign for the 1988 massacre and the slogan of no to executioner, no to imposter (no to Ibrahim Raisi and no to Hassan Rouhani), the Iranian regime’s Council for Coordinating Propaganda announced that the propaganda against the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) centered around the eighties is at the top of its agenda.

According to the government media, Nosratullah Lotfi, deputy of this organization, said: “We have taken steps to introduce the martyr and hangman to the people. The Supreme Leader (Khamenei) said that the place of the executioner and the martyr should not be changed.”

“We put two points on our agenda. The first is to review the events in the 1980s. The leader raised the issue in the electoral space, as some had the intention of purifying the Mojahedin,” he added.

Meanwhile, Kamal Kharrazi, a former foreign minister and head of the regime’s Foreign Relations Council, expressed concerns over the role of the Mojahedin and Iranian Resistance in Europe, as he met with officials from the European countries who came to Tehran to participate in the inauguration of the regime’s President Hassan Rouhani.

According to state-run media reports, he said in a meeting with the foreign policy chief of the European Union, while calling the PMOI a terrorist group, “one problem with Europe is the application of dual standards in the fight against terrorism, so that the PMOI which is a terrorist group, is welcomed in Europe and is freely destroying the relations between Iran and European countries.”

Kharrazi also expressed his horror of the activities of the Iranian Resistance in France, in a meeting with Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne, a Secretary of State and the Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, and said: “... Sheltering (the Mojahedin) and their freedom of action for various activities, including their presence in the French Parliament, are not acceptable.”

MEK/PMOI GAINS SUPPORT WHILE IRANIAN REGIME GETS WEAKER

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by Poorang Novak

The justice-seeking movement that wants the Iranian regime to be punished for the horrific massacre of MEK/PMOI members is gaining momentum, just weeks after the opposition’s event in Paris. On 1st July, tens of thousands of people attended the Free Iran rally and hundreds of former US and European government officials and prominent political figures spoke about the need for justice for the MEK/PMOI members who were killed during the 1988 massacre.

The Iranian regime is at an extremely low point. In the days before the grand gathering, Foreign Minister of Iran Javad Zarif went to Paris to try to stop the event from taking place. He was unable to manage this.

Not long later, Supreme Leader Khamenei sent his adviser Kamal Kharrazi to the French capital to declare that the MEK/PMOI is a “terrorist group” that has been involved in the murder of “thousands of ordinary citizens in Iran”. This is clearly an attempt to smear the MEK/PMOI’s solid reputation and to counter the increasing amount of support it is getting.

Kharrazi has been involved in activities that aim to badmouth the MEK/PMOI in the past. There was an alarming criminal conspiracy against the Resistance and the MEK/PMOI that resulted in the June 17, 2003 dossier that was a failure for the Iranian regime and its co-conspirators. The file was closed by the French authorities and the MEK/PMOI’s reputation was enhanced as a result.

The MEK/PMOI has been calling for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to be designated a foreign terror organisation. In retaliation, the Iranian regime has been fabricating files to use against the MEK/PMOI so that French authorities will change their opinion. Many other fabrications have taken place over the past ten years. It is the regime’s attempt to wage psychological warfare against the MEK/PMOI.

In 2005, it was revealed by a French lawyer that the Iranian regime wanted to blame the MEK/PMOI for the Halabja chemical attack that killed and injured thousands of Kurds at the end of the Iran-Iraq war. The regime was allegedly prepared to pay $100 million so the MEK/PMOI was implicated.

The Iranian regime, despite numerous attacks on the MEK/PMOI, has been unable to keep it down. The 1988 massacre which resulted in the death of more than 30,000 MEK/PMOI members and other such atrocities, that continue to this day, have not been able to dissuade people from resisting. The people want justice, freedom and democracy and they will not be stopped.

The MEK/PMOI was once listed as a terrorist organisation, but was understandably removed when it was properly understood that it has no terrorist links. However, this does not stop the regime from repeating the nonsense. Numerous officials, time and time again, try to make out like the MEK/PMOI carries out terrorist activities.

The MEK/PMOI is gaining more and more support, and an increasing number of important political figures are speaking out against the Iranian regime. At the recent rally in Paris, Senator Joseph Lieberman highlighted that Raqqa is not the capital of Islamic extremism and terrorism – it is in Tehran with the mullahs’ regime.

It is imperative for the Iranian regime to be held accountable for the crimes against humanity it has committed, but it is even more imperative that Iran sees regime change soon. A democratic alternative, a viable alternative, exists – the MEK/PMOI.