 Born again
Story of an MKO member: Part three
By Sepideh
November 20, 2003
The Iranian
The next morning, Sister
Tahmineh gave us an hour-long lecture about the renegade
members. Parviz was absent. She told us that the leadership
expected us to punish the renegades and those who grew cynical
about the
Organization. She then declared that we, the combatants, should
always be ready to answer back with a harsh rejoinder.
A few days later we saw the loose-tongued Parviz,
who had been beaten up again. This time almost to death. He was
running
amok around the buildings moaning and fearful. We were all satisfied
that he had been duly punished and that nobody else would dare turn
against the Organization or dessert it. He didn't want to go back
to the dorm. He was taken to a room and kept there.
One day while we were pulling out heather on a
moorland near our dining hall, we saw Morteza Y., accompanied
by some
others, going towards Sister Tahmineh's room. His face had swollen.
I ran towards Sister Tahmineh's room to see what was going on.
Morteza had grown "cynical" according to the Organization.
He hadn't take part in the daily meeting for two days and was
lying in his bed in a bad mental shape. He had been reduced to
a wreck.
While he was sleeping, another supporter Abbas
K., attacked him, bruising his face badly. A number of
supporters
also joined Abbas and began beating Morteza mercilessly. This
was, of course, pre-planned by their team commander.
Some thought
Morteza's gruesome condition would trigger Sister Tahmineh to
berate Abbas and others who had joined him in the beating. On
the contrary, Sister Tahmineh's reaction was of no consequence
to Morteza's welfare. She also criticized him harshly. She yelled
and swore at him for nearly half an hour, calling him a traitor,
and a trash renegade.
"You are worse than a Pasdar (a member of the regime's
Islamic Revolutionary Guards)," she yelled. "You
deserve death. I wonder why they didn't kill you. You are worse
than garbage and don't deserve to be in this sacred place. If
they allowed me, I would order your immediate
execution. You dirty pig."
Her verbal beating of Morteza pleased
us very much. We felt he had betrayed the people's ideals and
the Organization's martyrs. We praised Abbas for what
he done and were deeply pleased that Morteza was pelted with
blows and curses.
As Sister Tahmineh was rebuking Morteza, Bahman
R. whispered to me that as soon as she finished with Morteza
it would be our
Turn to teach him a lesson. I replied that I thought Morteza
had had enough. "Not at all, it hasn't left a bad taste
in his mouth
yet," he said. He added, "By the way, who knows better,
you or the commanders. Are you blind? Don't you see how harshly
Sister
Tahmineh treats him? Besides, they have given us the okay to
put the screws on some of the other kids who have grown cynical,
like Farshid, Salam and Fardin."
As soon as Sister Tahmineh
dismissed Morteza, I rushed to help Bahman give him another good
beating to please our commanders. While we were beating him,
Bahman kept on telling him, "Break-away traitor, you shameless
renegade. We have shed our blood. We have given martyrs.."
As
he was uttering those words, he beat Morteza even more passionately
that before. Morteza vehemently denied the charges, shouting
"By God, I am not a renegade. By God, I am not a traitor. By
God, the Organization's martyrs are my brothers and sisters."
Morteza ended up deserting the Army. This, of
course, was only one of a number of such incidents. Salam, a
twenty-year old member
from Kurdistan Province was next to undergo the same experience.
He had grown introverted, aloof and upset.
One day a member, Alireza,
came to me and said, "Do you know this lazybones, Salam, has
become cynical?"
"No i don't. But why do you say that," I said.
"Our team commander told me. Now it's his turn
to be taught a lesson."
Later, I discussed this with my team
commander, Arman
J. He said he knew everything, adding that they had decided
to give him something to do to make him stop moping around.
His punishment was that he had to move loads of sand and soil
on a wheel barrow from beside the road to a spot across from
the hall. "While doing this, he can muse
and ponder as much as he wants," Arman said.
I became angry
and said, "But this is not enough for him. We should give him
a good beating.
They are betraying the Organization. They are betraying Iran.
We should make him feel the pinch." Arman smiled at me and said,
"Don't worry. We know the score. We will play devil with him
so that not only he but others will never forget the word renegade."
At
the time, I didn't know what he meant, but later we learnt that
the Organization had turned Salam into Iraq's security organization.
They sentenced him to eight years in jail for illegal entry into
Iraq. Presently, he is in Abu Qoraivah Prison, serving his revolutionary
sentence under the worst possible conditions one can think of.
We disagreed with the "mild" punishment
the MKO meted out to Salam and others like him. We objected
that they were not
executed. These pigs deserved nothing less than death. People
like Salam were not few. Many of them are in prison in Iraq.
I can recall Abbas Z., Bijan K., Nader R.,
Mohsen R., Mohsen R. and others.
Every week or two we would meet with Sister Jila
D., a high ranking member of the Organization. She is a member
of
the National Resistance Council and the MKO's leadership Council.
The meetings were exclusively planned for the Reception units.
There was always a recurrent them in Sister Jila's
speeches, "Trust". She would tell us that "The
greatest treachery that
Iran's government has committed is that is has obliterated
the people's
trust, but we, the MKO, want to regain it and give it new life.
The MKO means trust. It means the hope which has been stifled
in the heart of Iranian."
She preached bizarre ideas. She wanted
us to put all our trust in the Organization and
surrender ourselves completely. She wanted us to collaborate
with
the Organization to try to bring back the trust people
had lost. She said this was possible only by giving absolute
authority and obedience to the leadership in the Organization.
It was, she vowed, the only way we could rekindle the people's
trust.
Another of her teachings which confused us was
her insistence that the newly received guerrillas should discard
their hostile
attitude towards Saddam Hossein and his rule. She told us our
hostilities were an obstacle which stood in the way of our
progress. She praised Saddam's
government so that she could purge our mind of the hostile
attitude we held
towards him because of his war against Iran. She would say
"We should learn from Saddam the way one can run a country.
Though
his
country
is
under severe sanctions, he tries strenuously to satisfy
his people's needs. He is implementing huge construction
and
economic plans that Iran's regime could not even dream of.
Despite being a one-party country, Saddam's rule is
a type of rational
democracy. All Iraqis, small and big, young and old, rich and
poor adore him for his services."
Speaking in such a flattering
tone about Saddam inspired us all to respect and praise
him. We thought the Iraqi people were so lucky that he was
ruling them >>> Part
4
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