Elisha Wiesel and the Elie Wiesel Foundation Host Disrupting Uyghur Genocide Conference

The Uyghur people have faced ongoing human rights abuses and genocide in China. However, it has largely been ignored in the media, and China has, for the most part, gotten away with these crimes.

Elisha Wiesel, son of Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, wouldn’t stand for it. That’s why he and the Elie Wiesel Foundation partnered with the World Uyghur Congress and the Uyghur Human Rights Project to hold the Disrupting Uyghur Genocide Conference and bring awareness to this issue. On April 17 and 18 in New York City, Wiesel came together with Uyghur leaders to discuss the ongoing plight of their people in China, taking lessons learned from the Holocaust and educating attendees on how to fight back against the oppression.

“The Elie Wiesel Foundation decided to relaunch an ‘activist’ stripe of our work, reflecting my parents’ long-standing history as activists who tackled hard problems, ranging from standing up to the Soviet Union for their refusal to let Soviet Jews emigrate, to their conference in Belfast where Catholics and Protestants attended, during the ‘troubles’ to the series in Petra, where they, with King Abdullah of Jordan, brought together PM Olmert and PM Abbas,” Wiesel told the Journal. “Our feeling was that the Uyghur genocide was the most under-reported, under-invested human rights tragedy occurring on the planet.”

“Our feeling was that the Uyghur genocide was the most under-reported, under-invested human rights tragedy occurring on the planet.” – Elisha Wiesel

Wiesel, a former Wall Street executive, carries on his father’s mission to stop hate in all its forms. In recent years, he spoke at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum about protecting the LGBTQ community, organized a Washington, D.C. rally against antisemitism and went in front of the United Nations to speak about the persecution of the Uyghurs. Now, he’s trying to spread the message about the Uyghurs in a time when the Chinese government suppresses any information on it.

“It’s hard for the media to cover a topic where the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] has successfully imposed a media blackout,” he said. “It’s one of the reasons the CCP is winning to date. The other reason is that celebrities, who might be tempted to speak out against Darfur or Sudan or Myanmar, often have dollars and cents at stake with their next movie or pair of sneakers poised to earn millions of dollars in the Chinese market.”

The conference featured panels including  “’Never Again’: The Uyghur Genocide and Learning from the Holocaust,” “Preserving Uyghur Cultural Identity” and “Learning from the Jewish Diaspora Experience,” “Beyond Concentration Camps: Forced Assimilation & China’s Colonial Boarding Schools” and “TikTok, Social Media and the CCP’s Agenda to Control Information.” Speakers such as the President of the Uyghur American Association, Elfidar Iltebir; Director of Holocaust, Genocide, and Interfaith Education Center at Manhattan College, Mehnaz Afridi; former Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues and the former U.S. Representative at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, Kelley Currie and Mihrigul Tursun, a Uyghur camp survivor, participated in the panels.

“It was chilling to hear survivors describe how the totalitarian, repressive CCP regime ripped apart families, pitted members against each other and disappeared their relatives who refused to cooperate,” Wiesel said. “It was sickening to hear the accounts of rape and forced sterilization.”

While some action has been taken to stop China from committing these atrocities, Wiesel believes there is much more to be done.

“It starts with putting pressure on U.S. corporations,” he said. “The good news is that Congress voted 428-1 for the Uyghur Forced Labor Act. Now corporations must do more to evidence that their supply chains are free of slave labor. And consumers need to include these human rights elements in their purchasing decisions.”

People can write to their local congressperson, urging them to stand up for the Uyghur people, and they can follow @forcedlabourfashion and check a brand’s report card before buying at forcedlabourfashion.org/report-cards.

Wiesel has been dedicated to human rights work for years, and post-Oct. 7, that fight has intensified. Like all Jews, the past seven months have been full of uncertainty, fear and anxiety.

“At first, I didn’t sleep because I was having nightmares,” he said. “Then I didn’t sleep because advocacy for our brothers and sisters in Israel became a second full-time job, an advocacy I should never have had to do except for the evil Oct. 8, which followed Oct. 7, where the Jewish people were blamed for the atrocities perpetuated on us.”

Though Wiesel said that this is the worst time for Jews he can remember, he is dedicated to staying in the U.S. and continuing to advocate for his community.

“My father loved the United States and everything it stood for,” he said. “So do I, and I refuse to give up on it. The American Jewish community has helped shape it and I believe we can continue to be a force for good in this incredible country.”

Ensuring that the community stays strong begins with educating the next generation and passing down Jewish traditions, which Wiesel believes have been forgotten.

“We have a generation, my generation and the one just above mine, which became overly assimilated and let our kids grow up with no notion of how precious our gifts are — living in the free world, having a Jewish tradition, having Israel,” he said. “We need to find a way to connect on this with the college-age students and twenty-somethings who have lost the plot.”

For his part, Wiesel’s going to continue his work with the Jewish and Uyghur communities and beyond, following in his father’s footsteps to make the world a better place for everyone.

“[My father] spoke enough words on many topics during many different contexts — and more importantly he spoke through his actions,” he said. “He believed in a Jewish future, raised a Jewish family and stood by Israel no matter how many on the world stage clamored for her to be punished and ostracized. I am choosing to do the same.”