The Oslo Freedom Forum has convened every year since 2009. There may have been a disruption or two: a labor strike, a pandemic. Anyway, it is an annual gathering, pretty much. The Oslo Freedom Forum is a project of the Human Rights Foundation, which is based in New York. (The Empire State Building, in fact.) The founder of OFF and HRF is Thor Halvorssen. You are not to be fooled by that Norwegian name. He is a Venezuelan.

The United States is a “nation of immigrants,” as we learned in kindergarten. But then, so are many others, to varying degrees.

To the Oslo Freedom Forum, people come from all over the world. They are dissidents, activists, democrats — opponents of tyranny. They are former political prisoners, future political prisoners. They cry against, work against, dictatorships of every type: military, Communist, cult-of-personality, what have you.

(Sometimes these types of dictatorship blend.)

They tell stories. They compare notes. They gain encouragement. They feel less alone.

Personally, I don’t do anything except listen, question, and type. The biggest risk I take in life is one ice-cream sundae too many.

• It occurs to me that, in its structure, the Oslo Freedom Forum this year is like Wagner’s Ring. Bear with me. The Ring is in four installments. Wagner designates them “Vorabend,” “Day One,” “Day Two,” and “Day Three.” (That first word means “the evening before”).

This is the kind of commentary you come to me for, I realize.

• I meet a young woman from Bolivia — whose country suffers under a nasty dictatorship. Chavista. Putin-aligned. The world at large knows too little about this, she says. Venezuela, they know about (with good reason). Bolivia, they know less about.

A few days later, I will see a news item: “Bolivian president says pleased with outcome of his visit to Russia.” Yeah, I bet. (That item is from TASS.)

• Later on, I see an old friend from Cuba — a veteran human-rights activist. She is puzzled by something, and she confronts me with it: “How can so many people in the United States who call themselves ‘conservative’ fall for a KGB man in the Kremlin?” She explains to me, in some detail, that Moscow and Havana are partners in oppression, as they have been for decades.

I know.

• Much of the forum takes place in the Oslo Concert Hall, where speakers give presentations from the stage. One speaker is Olga González, an activist from Venezuela. I’m sure she never set out to be an activist. Her husband was murdered in 2017.

She speaks of the torture centers and other features of the chavista regime. She also names some names — names of victims, which is so important to do. Her husband was killed while participating in a peaceful protest. So were these others.

Luis Guillermo Espinoza, age 15. Rubén Darío González, age 16. Juan Pablo Pernalete, 20. Daniel Queliz, also 20. His mother, a year later, committed suicide, “she was in such pain,” says Mrs. González.

• Masih Alinejad is a journalist and activist from Iran. I wrote a piece about her in 2021: “A Free Spirit.” She is that, yes. In Oslo this year, she is accompanied by three other Iranians, who have taken part in the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests. These Iranians are Sima Moradbeigi, Kosar Eftekhari, and Zaniar Tondro.

They have all been injured, maimed, by state agents. Two had an eye shot out. One lost the use of a hand, as I understand it.

The people I see before me are defiant and determined. It must be so very hard.

• Faisal Saeed Al Mutar is an Iraqi American — born in Babylon, raised in Baghdad. According to his bio, he “survived the Iraq Civil War, the murder of his brother, and several kidnapping attempts” before coming to the U.S. as a refugee in 2013. He has a lot to say, as you might imagine. And he has founded an organization: Ideas Beyond Borders. A good idea.

• Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib is a Palestinian American. In the concert hall, he talks about Gaza. More than 30 of his family members have been killed in the current war. He says things that many Israelis would not like. He says things that many Palestinians would not like (and Hamas might kill him for them).

He has had an eventful life, and, in my brief note, I will say only this: If people such as this man ever got the upper hand in Palestinian politics, there would be no Israeli–Palestinian conflict at all. There would be peaceful coexistence, instant and lasting.

• Maybe I could pause for a language note, in a column generally grave — a note on transliteration. I have written “Al Mutar” and “Alkhatib.” I have been inconsistent. But I have used the styles preferred by the respective men, I believe.

Style is all over the place: “Al Mutar,” “al-Mutar,” “Almutar.”

Switching to the Korean peninsula, we have “Seong Min,” “Seong-min,” and “Seongmin.”

I could move on to China and other countries — countries whose languages don’t use the Latin alphabet.

One day, there ought to be a grand conference, at which all agree on transliteration.

• Seongmin Lee — whose name could be rendered “Lee Seong Min,” etc. — is the director of the Korea desk at the Human Rights Foundation. He was born and raised in North Korea. How great to have gotten out. (I have put this as mildly as possible.)

He talks about a new publication — something unique: a publication about North Korea, whose articles are by North Koreans, in English. NK Insider. The more that is known about the “hermit kingdom,” the better — better for North Koreans, worse for the ruling Kims.

Talking with Seongmin, I have a reflection. When I was growing up, there were West Germany and East Germany. Few could imagine a reunification (whatever they would say after the fact). And yet . . . (It was sudden, too.)

There were also South Vietnam and North Vietnam. That’s another story — a ghastlier, bloodier one.

• Every year at the Freedom Forum, you see and hear from relatives: relatives of political prisoners, who cannot speak for themselves (obviously). I have talked with mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters — people doing their utmost for their imprisoned and brutalized loved ones.

This year, Sebastien Lai takes the stage. He is the son of Jimmy Lai, the great entrepreneur and great man who is a prisoner of the authorities in Hong Kong. I podcasted with Sebastien last year (here). I wrote a piece about his dad: “The Struggle of Jimmy Lai.”

When Jimmy was a boy, Sebastien points out, he ran from Communist China to Hong Kong. Then Communist China came to Hong Kong, so to speak. Jimmy could have run again. But he didn’t. He stayed in the city, to stand with his fellow democrats, even if it landed him in prison, which it did.

I so hope to meet him some day. And I would tell him, among other things, what a fantastic job Sebastien did, in these dark days.

Maybe I have thrown enough at you, in one go. I will conclude these notes tomorrow. Thank you for joining me. Long live freedom, and to hell with tyrants.

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