**Before I start, I want to say a huge THANK YOU to Alex Gladstein (Chief Strategy Officer at the Human Rights Foundation) for his invitation/support to attend the Oslo Freedom Forum. And a massive thank you to Arsh Molu and Alex Li for helping put together what I believe to be my favourite event of the year.
Hello, friends!
Hope you’re well – and if you’re in Vancouver, hope you’re enjoying today’s sunshine!
Last week, I attended the Oslo Freedom Forum, a human rights conference hosted by the Human Rights Foundation (HRF) in Oslo, Norway. For three days, I was surrounded by activists, journalists, lawyers, human rights defenders, democracy advocates, political scientists, hostage and genocide survivors, protestors, artists, tech entrepreneurs, thought leaders… the list goes on.
The energy they exuded – of fight and resilience and hope – was a rare and beautiful constellation.
But let me also be clear. I went through a whirlwind of human emotions. Each day I felt disillusionment, frustration, sadness, and helplessness, followed by inspiration, excitement, courage, and hope. I can’t believe a single person left the conference without having cried and (eventually) smiled for the future ahead. It was impactful and a mind/heart-expanding experience that is difficult to put into words.
If it’s ok with you, I’d like to share three meaningful moments from the conference (among hundreds of others).
3 Lovely Highlights.
Meeting Gulbahar Haitiwaji.
Remember the interview I did with Gulbahar Haitiwaji, the Uyghur activist and survivor of a Chinese concentration camp? She also spoke at the conference!
As she stepped onto the stage, I got nervous. Maybe because I felt I knew her. Because it felt like watching a friend go up on stage. Or maybe because I was invested in her. Because I had come to ingrain myself in her through writing her story.
Like she did with me, she shared her experience surviving a Chinese concentration camp. As she recalled the abuses she endured, she took a moment to catch her breath and let her tears fall. Her friend, Kalbinur Sidik, who witnessed these atrocities and who was also on stage, comforted her with a soft touch. Almost as if to say “I’m here with you. Keep going.”
As Gulbahar teared up, I did too, and so did many people in the audience. We could feel her psychological wounds and heartbreak. By the time she ended, the whole audience stood up in applause because of her courage to speak up and risk everything in the name of exposing the atrocities committed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Here’s her 15-minute talk which I HIGHLY recommend:
And the best part? I got to meet her in person! As I stood in front of her, I couldn’t stop tearing up. Maybe because we break in the presence of a person who has endured things they should never have had to endure. I told her what she meant to me, that I admired her, that I wished she never experienced this, and if she ever needed anything else – I was here. I thanked her for her courage because if it wasn’t for her I wouldn’t have known about the Uyghur genocide.
Emceeing the Financial Freedom Track & Interviewing Adam Back.
Alex Gladstein (Chief Strategy Officer at the Human Rights Foundation) asked Ben Perrin (Host of the BTC Sessions) and I if we would emcee the Financial Freedom track of the Oslo Freedom Forum (basically, the Bitcoin portion of the conference where they explore Bitcoin as a tool that protects human rights).
Although I was nervous, I said yes because this was an incredible opportunity I could not pass up. Luckily, once I got up on stage my nerves left me. Or maybe I defied my nerves?
I had so much fun introducing topics such as the ones below.
How to use Bitcoin in a Dictatorship
A New Banking System for Activists
Challenging Financial Colonialism
Lightning in Emerging Markets
Bitcoin, Decentralized Tech, and Democracy
Off-Grid Activism
… plus a tonne of other goodies!
You can watch the full Financial Freedom track here:
And catch this! In the end, we had a surprise guest – Adam Back! Adam Back is a renowned cryptographer, cypherpunk, and early pioneer in the digital currency movement. His development of Hashcash provided the foundation of Bitcoin’s mining capabilities. In fact, his work is referenced in the original white paper. He is a legend, and a very big deal, with a very big heart!
Dinner with Carine and Anaïse Kanimba.
If you ever watched the movie “Hotel Rwanda,” you might remember Paul Rusesabagina, the hotel manager who saved more than 1,200 people in his hotel. Paul adopted two sisters, Carine and Anaïse Kanimba after their parents were murdered during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Eventually, Paul was considered to be a dissident and detained by the Rwandan government.
The sisters are activists who advocated for the release of their father, Paul Rusesabagina. They worked tirelessly to lead the #FreeRusesabagina campaign and raised awareness of their father’s wrongful detention in Rwanda, which led to his release in 2023 after 2.5 years of unjust imprisonment. MASSIVE achievement!
A wonderful, serendipitous moment happened during a dinner hosted by HRF. Carine and Anaïse sat at my table. At first, I had no idea who they were but, to my delightful surprise, I came to learn who they were, their activism work, and about Carine going to London to get a Law degree... And of course, how thrilled they were to have their father back home.
Only at the Oslo Freedom Forum would I have bumped with freedom fighters and had dinner with people changing the world.
The Oslo Freedom Forum is a Must-Attend Conference.
During the conference, I was reminded that many governments have not delivered the peace, security, jobs, and economic growth that we have all hoped for. They need to do much better and we need to do a better job holding these powers to account. It is my opinion that our negligence has partly contributed to the world becoming more about control, surveillance, and oppression.
**Check out Alex Gladstein’s short video clip on how we should be spying on governments instead of governments spying on us.
But, this is also a time of opportunity and a time to restore. In the words of American political scientist and author, Francis Fukuyama:
“A strong state looks very strong and it has a lot of repressive potential. And so, you know, from day-to-day, month-to-month, there may not be openings to do things. But with this weakness, as I've described is the case, there will be an opening at some point. There'll be some exogenous event – a crisis, a pandemic, a war, unhappiness about economic conditions – that will intervene… So there will be opportunities I think for change in the future.”
Watch Francis’ talk here:
Friends, we’re living through moments of openings, in which we’re seeing movements and technologies that promote freedom (like Bitcoin). Amidst the (seemingly) dystopian world we’re in, there are people rising up to defend our collective political and financial freedom – and that’s wildly encouraging!
There’s no place that will inject you with more hope than the Oslo Freedom Forum. I hope you will consider joining the fight for freedom and attend next year’s Oslo Freedom Forum. I promise you won’t regret going.
Con cariño,
— Ayelen xx
One Request to Bitcoiners.
If you’re a Bitcoin builder or an entrepreneur, I implore you to attend the OFF. You’ll hear first-hand of the challenges in attaining freedom that billions of people face around the world. You’ll meet people representing the billions and people fighting in the frontlines to change the future of humanity. What better way to learn, build the right products, and grow than to attend the OFF?