Oslo Freedom Forum: where dissidents blow off steam

It was on my third glass of James Bond’s favorite Champagne, Bollinger, that I suddenly remembered why I was here in Norway. “I’m going undercover in Russia next week,” a woman told me. I can’t remember her name — and even if I did I wouldn’t tell you. I wished her luck; she looked confused. “I’ve done worse,” she said. This wasn’t her first rodeo that could potentially end in imprisonment or death. 

I was at the Oslo Freedom Forum, an annual event put on by the Human Rights Foundation. It’s marketed as a global gathering of human rights and pro-democracy activists. And while there are a bunch of them, over the years — this year was its fifteenth anniversary — it has attracted a group of hangers-on, people that flitter from conference to conference and call themselves “thought leaders.” I suspect they don’t really give two hoots about freedom. Just the free hotels, free activities and the endless free booze.

I’m generally pessimistic about the point of these events, (I know some of these hangers-on personally and know their intentions) — but the Oslo Freedom Forum felt different. Unlike most conferences, it is fun. The first day I arrived in Norway, I was invited on a yacht for a private boat tour through the Oslo fjord — a kind of Goop cruise for the oppressed. Since it began in 2009, the forum has had 355 speakers from 108 countries with seventy-seven of them being former political prisoners that have spent a combined 263 years behind bars. It doesn’t really get more legit than that. 

The forum is different because there is an air of transparency about it, at least from those on the inside. People I spoke to over the week told me they believed that the whole point of the event was to act as a well-deserved blowout for dissidents and activists. As one put it to me, “the Oslo Freedom Forum isn’t a place I would come to learn about corruption and human rights,” but instead “it is a place to have fun and let loose.” One attendee even dubbed it as “Thor’s personal birthday party,” referring to Thor Halvorssen, the CEO of the HRF and founder of the forum, a gorgeous gay Venezuelan who has been described as looking more like a “J. Crew model than a hardened activist.” But underneath the gold Versace waistcoat and layers of hair gel, Halvorssen is a man on a mission. He decided to create a human-rights organization after his mother was shot by Venezuelan security forces on August 15, 2004.

Once I realized that nobody here expected to change the world this week, the pressure was off. Before that I felt a pang of guilt for glugging Champagne and snacking on canapés while Tanele Maseko spoke of her husband Thulani’s murder in January of this year by agents of the Swazi state. The killing happened in front of Tanele and their children. The week was a bizarre combination of hedonism, horror stories and spiritual awakenings. You may think I’m exaggerating about the last part — but at one point in the week I was invited to sit in a theater in front of Thor and four other activists, while they held hands and cried to us about finding themselves through MDMA therapy. 

Oslo has become a hot ticket. After I bagged myself a spot on the list, I had texts from friends telling me I was jammy for going to what the Financial Times dubbed in 2015, “Davos for dissidents.” Since 2015 I can imagine that it has only become more grand. After hearing Tanele Maseko speak I saw world-renowned Swedish pop singer Zara Larsson. On the last day of the event we heard from Syrian human rights activist Omar Alshogre as he recalled his torture — electrical shock, beatings and removing his finger nails — at Sednaya Prison, a military prison operated by the Syrian government and nicknamed the “Human Slaughterhouse.” After that I grabbed myself a margarita and took a dip in the fjord. 

Other journalists at the event were asking the hard-hitting questions; how to end authoritarianism; the philosophy of human rights; the psychological impact of nearly being killed multiple times by terrible people. I decided from day one that I wasn’t qualified to wade into all that. What I did learn is what a party for dissidents looks like. It’s fun and full of booze. I am now more interested in human rights than ever before — all it took was a free bar.