OSLO — THE movie “Titanic” was more than just a doomed romance for Yeonmi Park.
Ms.
Park, 21, said she was a young teen living in North Korea when she
watched a bootleg copy of the blockbuster. The tale of love found and
lost helped her begin to shake off the psychic grip the Kim dynasty had
on her.
“It
was fascinating to me that anyone would make a movie about such a
shameful story,” she said during a speech last week at the sixth Oslo Freedom Forum, a gathering of activists and dissidents from around the world. “How could they release such a movie? I was so curious.”
Before,
Ms. Park had believed that “dying for the regime was the most honorable
thing you could do,” and she and her sister had vowed to die for the
Kims if necessary. But in “Titanic,” she saw “people dying for love, a
man willing to die for a woman. It changed my thinking,” she said,
adding, “It gave me a taste of freedom.”
For
a conference dedicated to human rights, there was a lot to talk about
this year. The Freedom Forum, which showcases and celebrates the stories
of dissidents, had an abundance of offerings at a time when the world’s
problems seem to keep multiplying. This is a place you can come to and
get depressed about a lot more than Ebola and the Islamic State, and
then wash your worries away with wine and reindeer served several ways —
it is Norway, after all.
The
speakers kept prodding the audience to remember their corners of the
world. But there are so many dark corners that it was easy to feel
discouraged, even among such a display of courage.
“Things
are unquestionably getting worse, and that is not embellishment or
melodrama,” said Thor Halvorssen, 39, the forum’s founder, of the state
of human rights. His group has helped smuggle activists
out of repressive countries, provided many with broader exposure and
connected others with prominent financiers and technologists. Nico Sell,
the chief executive of Wickr, a communications app that promotes its
privacy, helpfully handed out Faraday cages, which shield cellphones and
other devices from digital snoops.
“People
say the truth will win out,” Mr. Halvorssen said, but “it’s hard for
truth to win out when on the other side there is an enormous machinery
of propaganda or of lawyers threatening defamation suits. Truth will win
out, but it needs a little help.”
For
Mr. Halvorssen, a Venezuelan with some Norwegian lineage, the
conference was personal; his uncle had been killed only a few days
earlier in what appeared to be a random act of violence in a country
where crime has spiraled out of control and little attention is paid.
Tales of horror and oppression stretched from Sri Lanka to Swaziland, China to Cuba.
From
Russia, there was a contingent of former prisoners; Maria Alyokhina and
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova from Pussy Riot; and Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the
Russian billionaire turned dissident, who set aside his own story to
tell those of Russians jailed for trying to protest at Moscow’s
Bolotnaya Square in 2012, on the day before President Vladimir V.
Putin’s latest inauguration.
From
Egypt, there was Bassem Youssef, his country’s Jon Stewart, talking
about his show being canceled under pressure from the latest military
regime. “I have no idea why you listen to an unemployed bum like me,” he
quipped.
From
Turkey, there was Erdem Gunduz, a dancer and the so-called standing
man, who stood motionless in silence during the Taksim Square protests.
When he accepted an award at the forum, he said the life of Sisyphus,
rolling a rock up a mountain, didn’t look so bad in his view. “It is a
job,” he said, “and maybe he’s happy because he’s employed.”
Pleas
for attention kept coming. Janet Hinostroza, an Ecuadorean journalist,
talked of the hypocrisy of her country’s leader, Rafael Correa,
providing asylum to Julian Assange while assailing journalists in his
country. “Please talk about this story,” she said. Yulia Marushevska, a
Ukrainian student who starred in a protest video that went viral on
YouTube, projected a map of her country because she said many didn’t
know where it is. “I ask you to stay with us in this fight,” she said.
The
Harvard professor Steven Pinker urged attendees to view the long game.
Yes, he called recent events “mildly discouraging” and cited statistics
showing that civil liberties were on the decline.
On
the other hand, he said: “What were the first governments like?
Archaeologists and historians tell us they were extraordinarily unfree.
Basically, all of the first centralized governments were led by despots.
“These
were men who could impose their will on their countries, who could kill
with impunity and who kept large harems of women,” he added. “So that
was our starting point.”
And now?
“Modernity
is increasing the forces that tend historically to push human rights
along — communications, education and reason,” he said. “If history is a
guide, these trends militate towards long-term expansion of freedom and
rights.”
This
much is clear from last week’s gathering: There is no shortage of
people committed to pushing human rights along. And they seemed to draw
strength from one another.
“They are really optimistic,” Ms. Park said of her fellow travelers. “They have hope, and I have hope, too.”
Danny Hakim is a European correspondent for The New York Times.http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/26/sunday-review/the-worlds-dissidents-have-their-say.html?smid=tw-share
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