This past weekend, the world lost a great human rights activist and now, Maryam Rajavi, leader of the Iranian Resistance had paid tribute to a fallen hero.
Elie Wiesel, the Romanian-born Jewish-American writer and Holocaust survivor, died on July 2, aged 87.
Rajavi said: “The whole world, and not only the people of his country and family, is mourning the painful loss of Elie Wiesel.”
Wiesel was a political activist who worked mainly in the fields of human rights, fighting against genocide and crimes against humanity. Rajavi praised him as “the embodiment of rebellion against indifference.”
He won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1986 for speaking out against violence and racism; in his acceptance speech, he echoed the views of today’s biggest activists.
He said: “Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant.”
This is especially relevant with the upcoming Free Iran rally, which will be held on July 9, in Paris. We cannot afford to stay silent on the regime’s abuses.
Wiesel said: “Indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor- never his victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten.”
He criticized those who knew “what was going on behind those black gates and barbed wire” (at Auschwitz) and did nothing because “in denying [others] their humanity, we betray our own.”
The same is true now, with Iran.
Wiesel defended residents of Camp Ashraf when they were attacked by agents of the mullah’s regime and refused to stay silent.
Rajavi said that we must not allow ourselves to become indifferent and remain silent on matters of oppression. The world needed Elie Wiesel, and it still needs people who embrace his spirit.
