Natan Sharansky and Bernard-Henri Levy sign ad urging protest of Beijing Olympics over Chinese persecution of Uyghurs
Protesters against China’s policies toward the Uighurs demonstrate outside U.N. headquarters in New York City, March 22, 2021. The protester in the foreground is wearing a kippah. (Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
(JTA) — A full page advertisement in The New York Times Saturday urged athletes and corporate sponsors to “walk away” from the Olympic Games, set to begin next month in Beijing, to protest China’s persecution of the Uyghurs.
“We urge the athletes and the sponsoring corporations to walk away from these games unless Beijing takes steps to reunite Uyghur families. And we urge the world’s citizens to embrace the cause of this persecuted population,” the ad stated.
The ad was paid for by the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity and was signed by the French Jewish philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy, the former Soviet refusenik Natan Sharansky, and Eli Wiesel’s son Elisha Wiesel. Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986 for his work speaking out about the lessons of the Holocaust and bringing attention to other genocides, died in 2016.
Full page ad in the @NYTimes today…
“The @UN must urgently invoke the Genocide Convention’s legal and moral obligation to act on Xinjiang. We pray they will.”
Led by @ElieWieselFdn w/ @ElishaWiesel @BHL @NatanSharansky
Thank you! pic.twitter.com/02QvXZj4vD
— Peter Irwin (@PeterIrwin_) January 29, 2022
Activists have urged a boycott of the Winter Olympics in Beijing over China’s treatment of the Uyghurs, a Muslim group in the northwest part of China whose members have faced forced internment in “reeducation camps” by the Chinese government. The Chinese government has said the move is meant to combat terrorism but numerous reports say the captive Uyghurs are pressured to abandon their culture and have been forced into labor and that women have been sterilized.
Both the Trump and Biden administrations have designated the persecution of the Uyghurs a genocide. United States officials plan to boycott the Beijing Olympics in protest of the Chinese persecution of the Uyghurs, though U.S. athletes will still participate in the games. Israeli officials are not expected to follow the Americans’ lead and are expected to attend the games.
Elisha Wiesel spoke about the situation of the Uyghurs at ceremony to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day held by the United Nations Thursday.
“China, which sits on the Human Rights Council, inflicts mass internment, forced labor and forced sterilization on the Uyghur people. As the world turns a blind eye to the forced separations and cultural eradication of Uyghur families, other oppressors — Myanmar, ISIS and the Taliban — breathe easier as they oppress the Rohingya, the Yazidi, and women,” Wiesel stated. “I have met with Uyghur dissidents and I believe their testimony. While we pretend nothing is wrong we must instead provide refuge for the Uyghur people and stand vigil for the disappeared.”
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