By Arild Molstad
Aftenposten Innskit magazine
The annual human rights conference, the Oslo Freedom Forum, which takes place in Oslo, has turned Norway’s capital into a meeting place for victims and opponents of brutal dictatorial regimes everywhere. The forum also gathers international media, politicians, artists, as well as leaders of organizations and companies championing the fight for human rights.
The Oslo Freedom Forum (OFF) conference was held for the first time in 2009, when the world held its breath during a crisis that threatened the planet’s largest financial institutions. Human rights violations were not exactly ‘breaking news’ in either Norwegian or global media that spring.
The invitation sent out by OFF’s parent organization, the Human Rights Foundation, to politicians, media, community, and business leaders was ambitious. It promised the audience close contact with prominent individuals who had dedicated their lives to promoting freedom of expression and combating repressive regimes.
At the inaugural event, the 43-year-old who welcomed the audience from the large stage at Christiania Theater looked out over a rather sparsely populated hall. In the audience, many asked themselves the same question: How had a relatively unknown Latin American named Thor Halvorssen managed to get prime minister Kjell Magne Bondevik and other former heads of state from abroad on the speakers’ list, as well as an impressive array of award-winning humanists and philanthropists, fearless dissidents, and high-profile prisoners of conscience?
A Difficult Birth
Even before the conference, rumors began to spread that the Norwegian-descended Halvorssen family had made their fortune in Venezuela — a country better known for its massive oil reserves than its democratic traditions. And, as it turned out, both at this and the next two conferences, several were skeptical of the ambitious plans to establish a forum “where prominent human rights advocates could annually meet and share their views and experiences with like-minded individuals.”
Far-left Norwegian journalists had problems accepting that Halvorssen, a seemingly politically conservative unknown, would become a spokesperson for democratic principles in the host city of the Nobel Peace Prize. While the local newspaper Dagbladet printed unconfirmed rumors that several of the speakers had supported military coups in South America, another, Klassekampen, published an appeal in which eighteen Norwegian researchers specializing in South America claimed that OFF “represents a narrow view of human rights that deviates from Norwegian foreign policy.”
A name that quickly came into the spotlight was the Venezuelan Leopoldo López, Halvorssen’s cousin, who attended the Forum both in 2010 and 2011. López had been a driving force for a more democratic governance in Venezuela and played a central role in the opposition to the increasingly controversial head of state, Hugo Chavez, and subsequently, the Maduro government. For this, López and his fellow opposition members received the Sakharov Prize for human rights in 2017. When López, exonerated by Amnesty and Human Rights Watch, among others, appeared at the OFF event in 2022, his session filled the room.
The Criticism Has Subsided
Thor Halvorssen was busy with the final preparations for the 15th OFF conference in 2023 when I asked him if he had considered moving the event to another location due to the critical political voices in the early years.
“Absolutely not. They only strengthened my decision to ramp up the engagement from the Human Rights Foundation. Besides,” he smiled, “I came prepared for criticism. Still, I am surprised at how the world looks from the Norwegian versus the international political perspective.”
When The Economist magazine and other reputable foreign media expressed great enthusiasm for the Human Rights Foundation’s initiative and that the conference could become a meeting place comparable to the World Economic Forum in Davos, it helped to quiet the debate.
“We were impressed — and cautiously positive,” said the leader of one of the organizations that supported the conference from the start. These included Fritt Ord, the City of Oslo, Amnesty Norway, the Helsinki Committee, Plan Norway, and Civita. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs was also early to provide support: first under Jonas Gahr Støre’s leadership, with NOK 400,000 — an amount that was later doubled when Espen Barth Eide later took over as foreign minister.
Gradually, most of the objections about alleged political bias and controversial speakers have disappeared. Thor Halvorssen has also repeatedly reminded the media that the conference is primarily a venue to discuss civil and political rights rather than socio-economic rights, focusing on regimes’ abuses.
Also, rumors about the Human Rights Foundation having “secret donors” have dissipated as well. The foundation has repeatedly refuted such claims by publicly disclosing all financial contributors. The exception, according to Halvorssen, is two donors who live in repressive regimes and do not want to appear on the list for fear of reprisals. He also defends the presence of two of the largest contributors on the sponsor list — well-known technology entrepreneurs with very different political views: Sergey Brin of Google and Peter Thiel (investor in Facebook and PayPal). Neither of them have attached any conditions to their donations, Halvorssen emphasizes.
Focus on Freedom of Expression Worldwide
The Fritt Ord Foundation was among the first to endorse OFF. Its director, Knut Olav Åmås, states: “We still provide a substantial annual grant because OFF truly is one of the most important global gathering places for human rights and freedom of expression activists.” He describes the influential annual event as “a fascinating mix of some of the bravest and most influential people alive today.”
Amås particularly believes in the new networks and new forms of cooperation the conference triggers. “With some of the most important international media present, they also firmly put human rights violations and oppression on the agenda,” he adds.
Several spectators at last year’s conference noted the number of segments on Bitcoin currency. I asked Thor Halvorssen to explain why. His response: “Opponents, especially in poor countries, need financial support in their life-threatening struggle against brutal regimes that do not hesitate to crush human rights at any cost.”
Some world leaders who have appeared on the Oslo Freedom Forum stage:
Elie Wiesel, Václav Havel, Lech Walesa, Julian Assange, Garry Kasparov, Hernando de Soto, Jody Williams, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Steven Pinker, Wole Soyinka, Anne Applebaum, Ai Weiwei, Alexei Navalny, and José Ramos-Horta.
The list is impressive. But it is not celebrities that represent the core idea of OFF. On the contrary, it is the names and faces of unknown victims, of dissidents who have suffered under the abuses of dictatorships and autocratic regimes, risking their lives and those of their loved ones. They have experienced the truth of George Orwell’s words from 1984: “Power is not a means; it is an end. No dictatorship is established to safeguard a revolution; it is the revolution that produces the dictatorship. The purpose of persecution is persecution. The purpose of torture is torture. The purpose of power is power.”
Memorable Experiences
That the OFF conference gives the invited actors a face and a voice could be felt during the farewell dinner at the 2023 year’s conference. At the Grand Hotel, at the head table, sat Carine Kanimba, the daughter of the hotel manager who saved countless lives during the Rwandan genocide, a drama dramatized on the big screen in 2004 with the famous actor Don Cheadle in the lead role. The day before, she had pleaded from the stage for help to get her father pardoned after Rwanda’s authoritarian leader, Paul Kagame, imprisoned him for his critical anti-regime statements. Before Easter the following year, after strong pressure, Paul Rusesabagina was reluctantly released.
At the same table was the award-winning Ukrainian TV journalist Marina Ovsyannikova. Shortly after Russian troops invaded Ukraine last year, she interrupted the broadcast on Russia’s state news channel during prime time by waving a “stop the war” sign on screen in front of millions of viewers. And President Putin. She trembled as she told the audience about her fears for what the future would bring, not primarily for herself but for her family, who remained in Moscow when she fled. Recently, she has written a book, “Between Good and Evil,” now translated into several languages.
As the world stands on the brink of an existential crisis where the consequences of bloody wars and civil wars threaten both great powers, soldiers, and civilians, the Oslo Freedom Forum has become a vital microscope highlighting gross human rights violations.
At the same time, as we face ecological disasters, both at sea and on land, cynical profiteers hunt down environmentalists who, with the constitution and international treaties in hand, attempt to preserve vulnerable forests, rivers, mountains, coastlines, and other intact nature.
When Thor Halvorssen was asked if dictatorships that fail to prevent “ecocide”—the destruction of intact, vulnerable nature — will appear more frequently on the Human Rights Foundation’s radar, he replied: “This has long been part of our collaboration with, for example, minorities. Environmental abuses deserve to come even higher on our agenda in the coming years.”
Translated from Norwegian