• Nobel Peace Laureate, Prof. Elie Wiesel: Sri Lanka's victimization of Tamil people must stop - TamilNet, Wednesday, 01 July 2009

Holocaust surviver, Jewish icon, and Nobel laureate, Professor Elie Wiesel, in a message posted on his website on 30 June 2009 said:

"Wherever minorities are being persecuted we must raise our voices to protest. According to reliable sources, the Tamil people are being disenfranchised and victimized by the Sri Lanka authorities. This injustice must stop. The Tamil people must be allowed to live in peace and flourish in their homeland."

In 1986, Prof. Wiesel won the Nobel Prize for Peace, and soon after, Marion and Elie Wiesel established The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity.

For his literary and human rights activities, Prof. Wiesel has received numerous awards including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the U.S. Congressional Gold Medal and the Medal of Liberty Award, and the rank of Grand-Croix in the French Legion of Honor.

Dr Elyn Shander, a Connecticut physician and a member of US-activist group, Tamils Against Genocide, has been working with the Elie Wiesel Foundation, updating the organization on the ground situation in the NorthEast. The Elie Wiesel Foundation has been receiving regular updates of the condition of the 300,000 Tamil civilians in the internment camps., Dr Shander said.

"We are very grateful that he [Prof. Wiesel] has responded to our request to support the Tamil people. Now that it is official on his website, we are certain that other institutions that are involved in holocaust and war-crime research will take up Sri Lanka case," Dr Shander told TamilNet.

Shander is also the vice president of a new organization USTPAC (United States Tamil Political Action Committee), an independent democratic organization dedicated to lawful means to restore Tamil Peoples right to self-determination and democratic self rule in their traditional homeland.

In 1978, President Jimmy Carter appointed Elie Wiesel as Chairman of the President's Commission on the Holocaust. In 1980, he became the Founding Chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. He is also the Founding President of the Paris-based Universal Academy of Cultures and the Chairman of The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity, an organization he and his wife created to fight indifference, intolerance and injustice. Elie Wiesel has received more than 100 honorary degrees from institutions of higher learning.