Notes on the Oslo Freedom Forum: Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Uyghurs, Cubans, Syrians, et al.
Editor’s Note: The Oslo Freedom Forum took place in the Norwegian capital from May 23 to May 25. Today we publish the first part of Jay Nordlinger’s journal.
The Oslo Freedom Forum is an unusual thing: It gathers human-rights activists from all over the world. Dissidents, oppositionists, former political prisoners — future political prisoners. OFF does not care whether the dictatorship is left or right. Whether the boot is red or black. It is anti-dictatorship. OFF does not favor human rights for some; it favors them for all.
This is a quite unusual thing.
Many people have good dictatorships and bad dictatorships. For example: Saudi Arabia, good; Iran, bad. Russia, good; China, bad. Cuba, good; Burma, bad. In my experience, those who oppose dictatorship across the board — and support liberty for all — are pretty rare.
• One of the greatest benefits of the Oslo Freedom Forum, say its participants, is that it makes people feel less alone. If you are a dissident up against a dictatorship, you can feel very, very alone. But the people at OFF are in the same boat, so to speak. They can trade stories, compare notes — be understood. And they feel less alone.
Which is a valuable gift.
• In the first session of the forum, Thor Halvorssen, the founder of OFF and its parent organization, the Human Rights Foundation, based in New York, speaks from the stage of the Oslo Concert Hall. (This is the home of another organization: the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra.) Halvorssen says that some people have asked him, “How come OFF doesn’t address abuses in democratic countries?” His answer is as follows:
People in democracies have remedies: legitimate courts; multiple political parties; a free press. People under dictatorship lack such remedies. There is a time and a place for everything. At this forum, we address abuses in authoritarian or totalitarian countries.
Which sounds (and is) reasonable.
• The opening session of the forum, you can see on YouTube: here.
• In his remarks — his welcome, if you will — Halvorssen says that more than half of humanity lives under authoritarian regimes: about 4 billion people. And you can see the contrast between unfree, closed societies and free, open ones. China is “buckling” under the coronavirus, says Halvorssen.
Which reminds me of Garry Kasparov, the chairman of the Human Rights Foundation. He has a pithy formulation: “China gave the world the virus; America gave the world the vaccine” (or most of the vaccines, I gather).
Kasparov, I admire no end, for this reason, among others: He doesn’t have to be doing any of this. He doesn’t have to campaign for freedom, democracy, and human rights around the world, exposing himself to risk, from the Kremlin, in particular. He could have spent his years as the great retired chess champion, the chess legend, receiving accolades from one and all.
When I mentioned this once, he responded, “I never wanted to be a statue. For one thing, just think what pigeons do to it.”
• Various people mention the stakes in Ukraine — which are huge, for Ukrainians, of course, and for the world at large. You know who recognizes this? The Russian state, for sure. I will quote the foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov: “This is not about Ukraine at all, but the world order. The current crisis is a fateful, epoch-making moment in modern history. It reflects the battle over what the world order will look like.”
A rare moment of agreement, between me and Lavrov, today’s Gromyko (and Molotov).
• The Oslo Freedom Forum is sometimes known as “Davos for Dissidents.” Bill Browder is a regular attendee. He spearheads the global campaign for Magnitsky acts. He has been in the crosshairs of Putin and his goons for years. (I wrote about Browder, and his extraordinary family, in 2018: here.) This year, Browder is not in Oslo but in Davos. Why? He explains in a video, presented to the forum. He wants to convince the big corporate executives to disassociate themselves, at long last, from Russia — from Putin’s authoritarian kleptocracy. There may be a window.
• Another regular attendee at the Freedom Forum is Vladimir Kara-Murza, the Russian democracy leader. Like Browder, he is not attending this year. But he is not in Davos. He is in a Russian prison cell. Long an advocate of political prisoners, he is now one himself — and he needs other people to serve as advocates for him.
Chief among them is his gallant wife, Evgenia — who is loath to be in the public eye, but who enters the fray whenever her husband cannot: when he has been subject to a poison attack, for example, as he has been twice, or, like now, when he is thrown into prison.
In the Oslo Concert Hall, Evgenia reads a message from Vladimir. He says he has no regrets whatsoever about speaking out against Putin’s assault on Ukraine, and the Kremlin’s other abuses and crimes. He quotes his mentor, Boris Nemtsov: “The cost of freedom is high.” (Nemtsov was murdered within sight of the Kremlin in February 2015.) Vladimir goes on to say, “The cost of silence and complicity is unacceptable.”
A great man.
• Oleksandra Matviichuk is a Ukrainian human-rights lawyer. She gives a talk in which she details atrocities committed by Russian troops in her country. There are some pictures, too — hard to look at, of course, but necessary to face. How do you gun down people riding their bicycles on their streets? Streets on which they have ridden their bicycles routinely, in the normal course of life? How do you break into a house, kill the father, and rape the mother in front of her young child? These are the kinds of things that Russians are doing over and over in Ukraine.
I realize that it’s a war: one army, or military, competing against another. But, mainly, it seems to me a simple assault by one country on the people of another. Not a hair on a Russian civilian’s head is threatened. But every person — every man, woman, and child — in Ukraine is a target. That’s a “war,” I suppose. But it seems to me something else, and has since the beginning.
Like others, I am usually very careful to distinguish between a government and a people — especially a dictatorship and the people under its rule. I take care to say “Putin” or “the Kremlin,” not “Russia” or “Russians.” But, you know? Putin is not killing women as they wait in a bread line. He is not firing at mothers and children as they try to evacuate. He is not raping anyone. Other people are doing this. There is a broader responsibility, is there not?
This is a big, contentious, and painful subject . . .
• Alexander Lukashenko, the dictator of Belarus, is a junior Putin. Those opposing his government are incredibly brave. I have been writing about them, in detail, since 2010. Here in Oslo, three women give a talk, jointly. They are heroines of democracy in Belarus: Veronika Tsepkalo, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, and Tatsiana Khomich. Tatsiana is the sister of Maria Kalesnikava, a political prisoner. Maria ripped up her passport rather than accept exile. Tatsiana is representing Maria while Maria is behind bars.
They have faced — they have braved — great dangers, these people. One of them says this: When you go out in the day, you don’t know whether you will return in the evening. Whether you will hug your children goodnight.
Once, at an opposition rally, the women were told that there were snipers on a nearby rooftop. All the women could think to do was wave to them.
It’s amazing what people will risk for the basic freedoms and rights that so many of the rest of us are lucky enough to take for granted.
• Last year, the Oslo Freedom Forum was held in Miami, not Oslo. This had to do with the complications of travel in a time of Covid. In a report from Miami, I wrote,
There is a panel on myths of the Cuban dictatorship. I am to moderate it. One of our guests was to be Carolina Barrero, a Cuban art historian and activist. But she has not come to Miami. Why? Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, the artist and political prisoner, has gone on hunger strike. Carolina and others have joined him in solidarity.
The things people do. The sacrifices they make. Extraordinary.
Since then, Ms. Barrero has been kept under house arrest in Cuba, then expelled from the country. She is here in Norway, speaking. And it is a pleasure to see her, and hear her. Many young people in Cuba are sick and tired of the dictatorship — even more sick and tired, possibly, than the old people are. They see that millions upon millions of people, including in Latin America, are leading normal lives, in free societies, or relatively free ones. Why should they be deprived of the same? Why should they have to live under one of the few remaining Communist dictatorships in all the world? Fidel and Che and the rest set up shop such a long time ago. The shop must be closed, or destroyed, at long last.
• I meet a friend of mine, a Uyghur American. She is so fed up. For six years, she says, Uyghurs abroad have been explaining the Uyghur situation to the world at large. What’s a Uyghur? How do you pronounce “Uyghur”? How do they differ from the ethnic majority in China? Etc. The U.S. State Department, among other institutions and bodies, has described Beijing’s persecution of the Uyghurs as a “genocide.” Yet no real action is taken. My friend is so sick of talking. Enough talking, she says. She is ready for her people to be a cause — a worldwide cause — as the Ukrainians are. The Uyghurs are facing an emergency, just as the Ukrainians are.
The frustration of my friend, I understand. Easily. I also think of the Syrians . . .
• Omar Alshogre is an amazing young man. He is a student at Georgetown University — vibrant; winsome. He was a political prisoner in his native Syria, subjected to any number of horrors. To have kept his sanity is an achievement. Before he was released, he underwent a mock execution. Understand: He thought it was a real execution. He thought he was going to die. Instead . . .
Anyway, an amazing, heart-in-throat story. I could not help thinking of Tosca, the Puccini opera. The prisoner, Cavaradossi, is told that there will be a mock execution. He has to play along. Then he will escape, with his beloved, Floria Tosca. And yet — the execution squad kills him for real.
It is wonderful to see Omar, alive and ready to tackle the world, for years to come.
• A concert hall ought to have a musical performance, and there is one — more than one, actually — on the stage here at the Freedom Forum. The one I have in mind is by Lynn Adib, a singer-songwriter born and raised in Damascus. A beautiful performer.
• There is also a comedian — Sakdiyah Ma’ruf, a woman from Indonesia. She is a “hijabi” (one who wears a hijab). She grew up in a conservative religious community, she tells us. So, the pandemic was not such a big deal. Stay at home? And if you have to go outside, cover up? Why, millions of women are experts at that . . .
A little laughter is a life necessity.
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