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Dissidents’ families targeted |
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Tuesday, 14 June 2005 |
The mullahs Ministry Of Intelligence Services(MOIS) routinely harasses
and intimidates dissidents outside Iran by exerting pressure on their
families inside the country. In most cases, the MOIS compels the
families to contact their children abroad to urge them to discontinue
their anti-regime activities and refrain from supporting the PMOI or
the NCRI. In other cases, the MOIS has arrested families of exiled
Iranians to force them to take a position against the Resistance or
collaborate with the regime.
In one example in 1995, MOIS officials approached the parents of Mr.
Abbas Minachi, a veteran PMOI member, and claimed he had been
imprisoned by the organization. In a statement that was distributed as
a United Nations documents at the Sub-commission for Prevention of
Discrimination and Protection of Minorities at the time, Pax Christi
wrote, “The Intelligence Ministry and an Iranian diplomat in Paris
contacted Mr. Abbas Minachi’s family and told them that their son was
imprisoned by the Mojahedin. By this, they made Mr. Minachi’s parents
to write to Prof. Copithorne, Amnesty International and other human
rights organizations and express their concern.”
Ultimately, Mr. Minachi came to Europe and contacted his father who was
in the United States at the time to assure him of his well-being. He
also met Prof. Copithorne in Geneva, unmasked the mullahs’ ploys, and
later wrote a letter to human rights organizations concerning the MOIS
propaganda.
The United Nations Sub-Commission for Prevention of Discrimination and
Protection of Minorities issued a resolution on August 16, 1996,
expressing profound concern over “increasing harassment and persecution
of families of Iranian exiles living under Islamic Republic and
pressures imposed by undercover government terrorists against Iranians
residing abroad aiming to force them to cooperate with activities
against dissidents in exile.”
The same year, the Washington Times wrote, “The organized campaign
adjacent the exiles in Western Europe emanates from the Iranian Embassy
in Bonn and is under the direction of a diplomat by the name of Vahidi
Attain. Some 15,000 Iranian expatriates live in Germany....The Iranian
Parliament ratified legislation two years ago legalizing punitive
actions of overseas dissidents ‘who conspire against Islam.’ ”
Since the war in Iraq in 2003, the MOIS has stepped up its harassment
of PMOI members’ relatives in Iran. It has forced a number of PMOI
families, especially elderly parents, to demonstrate outside embassies
in Tehran, such as the Swiss embassy (U.S. Interest Section), the
British embassy, the United Nations Development Office, etc. These
actions were intended to propagate the notion that PMOI members were
being held in Iraq against their will and must be returned to Iran.
The MOIS has set up a fake association, the so-called ‘Salvation
Association’ (Nejat)to ostensibly help the families and promised them
that they could see their children. Through Nejat, the MOIS tried to
send PMOI relatives to Camp Ashraf in Iraq as a ploy to woo PMOI
members to return to Iran. On several occasions, these families
were brought to Iraq by bus, and Iranian embassy employees handed the
families placards with anti-Mojahedin slogans in Arabic and English and
took them to Camp Ashraf. A camera crew from Iran’s state-run
television was accompanying the families on each occasion.
Once informed by the PMOI representatives that they would welcome such
visits, the families met privately with their loved ones and exposed
the MOIS plot to use them as propaganda pawns against the PMOI.
The PMOI issued several statements since then and declared its
readiness to make the necessary arrangements for these families to meet
their children. It also emphasized that the gates of PMOI camps were
open to the families and they could meet their relatives and children
without any hindrance. Subsequently, the families stayed at Camp Ashraf
for several days and met their relatives. Throughout the years 2003,
2004, and 2005 tens of thousands of Iranians, many of them PMOI
members’ relatives, came from Iran and visited their loved ones in
Ashraf. |
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