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There's been a lot of controversy surrounding the Oslo Freedom Forum’s sources of funding. Nasty and poorly referenced attacks have been levelled at the Forum’s charismatic head honcho, Thor Halvorssen Mendoza (commonly known as Thor Halvorssen) accusing him of being financed by the same far-right Islamophobes who inspired Norwegian mass killer Anders Breivik. Halvorssen is a Venezuelan of Norwegian heritage, whose father was a political prisoner in Venezuela in the early 90s, and whose mother was shot at a protest against Chavez’s re-election in 2004.
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Jacob Appelbaum, on the right, talks to Rafael Marques de Morais about his hacked laptop.Later that evening, activists attending the forum began asking Appelbaum to inspect possible spyware on their computers. Rafael Marques de Morais, an Angolan anti-corruption activist, was found to have simplistic screencapture spyware that was traced back to a coder in India, most likely contracted by Angola to report on Marques for them. Cryptography and hacking are part of the future of the human rights project. Those who seek to control their citizens hire mercenary hackers to spy on them. So it's gratifying to know that there are some hackers out there, like Appelbaum, who say they cannot be bought and who actively help dissidents protect themselves from their governments.The Oslo Freedom Forum is an important event to help encourage, teach and publicise human rights activists from around the world. These kinds of connections are necessary to continue the peaceful struggle against oppression that so many people are engaged in. Serbian activist Srdja Popovic, who led the revolution that toppled Slobodan Milosevic in 1998, told the Forum that nonviolent revolutions were twice as likely to succeed as violent ones.By connecting with people like him, members of ongoing revolutions – like the one in Bahrain – can get advice on how to maintain their nonviolent principles in the face of brutal repression. By seeing the work of satirists like Mads Brugger and Ali Ferzat, we see how comedy can be used to make the powerful ridiculous. Activists need these events to tell their stories, make connections and learn that they are part of an interconnected human rights support network.
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