Thor Halvorssen | |
---|---|
Born | Thor Leonardo Halvorssen Mendoza March 9, 1976 |
Education | University of Pennsylvania (BA, MA) |
Organization(s) | Human Rights Foundation (Founder and CEO) Oslo Freedom Forum (Founder) |
Thor Leonardo Halvorssen Mendoza (born 1976; [1] [2] Spanish pronunciation: [ˈtoɾ(x)alˈβoɾsen] ) [a] is a Venezuelan human rights advocate and film producer with contributions in the field of public policy.
Halvorssen is founder of the annual Oslo Freedom Forum and president of the Human Rights Foundation, an organization that states their mission as to promote freedom against authoritarian regimes. Halvorssen bought the Norwegian news magazine Ny Tid in May 2010. [3]
Halvorssen has appeared on television outlets such as Fox News Channel's The O'Reilly Factor and Hannity & Colmes , MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews and CNN. He was a speaker at TEDx at the University of Pennsylvania in October 2010. [4]
Halvorssen was born in Venezuela to Hilda Mendoza, a descendant and a relative, respectively, of Venezuela's first president Cristóbal Mendoza and liberator Simón Bolívar. His father is Thor Halvorssen Hellum, who served as a Venezuelan Ambassador for anti-Narcotic Affairs in the administration of Carlos Andrés Pérez and as special overseas investigator of a Venezuelan Senate Commission. His family was prosperous and on his father's side he is the grandson of Øystein Halvorssen, who served as Norway's honorary consul-general in Caracas [5] and who "built a family dynasty as the Venezuelan representative for corporations including Dunlop, Alfa Laval and Ericsson." [1] His cousin is the Venezuelan politician Leopoldo Lopez. [6] Halvorssen attended the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude with concurrent undergraduate and graduate degrees in political science and history.[ citation needed ]
Halvorssen's father, also named Thor Halvorssen, was a wealthy businessman who was named the CEO of Venezuela's state TV CANTV. [7] In 1989, then-President Carlos Andrés Pérez appointed Halvorssen Sr. as Venezuela's "anti-drug ambassador". [8] When Halvorssen was a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania, in 1993, his father was arrested after a series of bombings around the capital. [9] It was named the 'yuppie' terrorists plot because its planners were allegedly bankers and other gilded elite who hoped that the panic caused by the bombs would help them speculate on the stock market." [10] His father was working on money laundering cases in the public service and said, Colombian drug traffickers framed the crime on him. His father was beaten [11] during his 74-day incarceration in a Caracas jail. [12] [13] [14] Halvorssen helped the campaign of Amnesty International and other organizations that pressured the Venezuelan authorities to free his father. [9] Halvorssen was eventually found not guilty of all charges. After his release the International Society for Human Rights appointed him director of their Pan-American Committee. [11] [15] [16]
While attending a peaceful protest of the Venezuelan recall referendum of 2004, Halvorssen's mother, Hilda Mendoza Denham, a British subject, was wounded by a gunshot. [17] Images of government supporters firing upon the demonstrators were captured by a live television broadcast. [18] [19] The gunmen were later apprehended, tried, had their sentences revoked, tried again, found guilty, and received 3-year sentences for murder and for bodily harm. [20] [21] They were released after serving six months in prison. [22]
Halvorssen has lectured on the subject of human rights including at Harvard Law School, the New York City Junto, the United Nations Association in New York, and the American Enterprise Institute. [23] [24] [25] [26] Halvorssen has also spoken at the British parliament for the Henry Jackson Society. [27]
Halvorssen testified to the U.S. Congress that he was the target of a smear campaign by Fusion GPS. Halvorssen provided testimony to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in July 2017. [28]
In 1999, Halvorssen became the first executive director and chief executive officer of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a U.S. civil liberties organization. As head of FIRE, Halvorssen formed beside with more traditional free speech defenders such as the ACLU also coalitions with advocacy organizations like The Heritage Foundation, Feminists for Free Expression and the Eagle Forum.
In 2001, Halvorssen stated that, "Liberty of opinion, speech, and expression is indispensable to a free and, in the deepest sense, progressive society. Deny it to one, and you deny it effectively to all. These truths long have been ignored and betrayed on our campuses, to the peril of a free society." [29] In a 2003 moderated chat, he said, "History has taught us that a society that does not respect individual rights, freedom of conscience, and freedom of speech will not long survive as a free society in any form." [30]
Halvorssen stepped down as head of FIRE in March 2004 to join its Board of Advisors and announced the creation of the international group Human Rights Foundation. HRF was incorporated in 2005, opening its headquarters in New York City in August 2006. The chairman is Garry Kasparov. [31] 2005[ citation needed ] he was also a founder of the Moving Picture Institute. [1]
At the helm of HRF Halvorssen has repeatedly lobbied and advocated for the release of Chinese political prisoner Liu Xiaobo. [32] [33] In 2010 Halvorssen was special guest of Liu Xiaobo at the Nobel Prize ceremony awarding the prize to Liu Xiaobo in absentia. [34] [35] [36] Halvorssen is identified as a supporter of Chinese Uyghur leader Rebiya Kadeer and has sharply criticized the Taiwanese Kuomintang government for its banning visits by Kadeer. [37] Halvorssen has supported UN-level action to address the violations of Uyghur rights in China.
Halvorssen was part of a symposium by the American conservative magazine National Review to praise Augusto Pinochet, where Halvorssen was the only one also pointing out his human rights abuses. [38] Halvorssen has criticised several celebrities like Jennifer Lopez, Erykah Baduh and Mariah Carey for accepting payments for their performances in countries governed by authoritarian leaders like Russia. [39] [40] [41] [42] [43]
Halvorssen appears as a frequent critic of Uganda’s president Yoweri Museveni and, in particular, the legislative efforts in Uganda to punish homosexuality with the death penalty. [44]
Halvorssen is a critic of Hugo Chávez, [45] and has written on Venezuela’s anti-Semitism and the assault on democracy and individual rights in Latin America. [46] Halvorssen's criticisms have also been directed at U.S. Republicans such as Jack Kemp [47] as well as Democrats including John Conyers and Jose Serrano. [48] Halvorssen led a campaign to expose Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov’s human rights violations and ultimately created a firestorm for Hollywood actress Hilary Swank after she accepted a cash payment to celebrate Kadyrov’s birthday. [49] [50] In the same manner Halvorssen has exposed payments from dictators to Jennifer Lopez, Erykah Baduh, Mariah Carey, Nelly Furtado, and 50 Cent. [51] [52] [53]
In 2009, Halvorssen founded a gathering of human-rights campaigners and policymakers called the Oslo Freedom Forum. It has taken place in Oslo annually since then. Wired Magazine blogger David Rowan praised the event for its sessions and having sponsors like Peter Thiel, "if the global human-rights movement were to create its own unified representative body, it would look something like this." [54]
The Economist called it 2010 as "on its way to becoming a human-rights equivalent of the Davos economic forum". Participants include Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Aliokhina, Lubna al-Hussein, Aung San Suu Kyi, Ai Weiwei, Wael Ghonim, Jimmy Wales, Elie Wiesel, Marina Nemat, Peter Thiel, Julian Assange, Václav Havel, Garry Kasparov, Leopoldo López, Lech Wałęsa, and Mikhail Khodorkovskii.
Since 2009, Halvorssen is listed as "Patron" of the Children's Peace Movement, On Own Feet. Known as the "Centipede Movement" it is a Czech-based group that facilitates bilateral relations between children and adolescents in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Canada, and Norway with children in war-torn countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq. The previous Patron was former Czech president Václav Havel. [55] [56]
In 2006, Halvorssen executive produced Hammer & Tickle , a film about the power of humor, ridicule, and satire as the language of truth in the Soviet Union. The film won Best New Documentary Film at the Zurich Film Festival. [57]
Halvorssen co-produced the film Freedom's Fury which was executive produced by Lucy Liu, Quentin Tarantino, and Andrew Vajna. It premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival.[ citation needed ] The film relates the story of the uprising against the government that occurred in Hungary in 1956.
Halvorssen is a producer of the film The Singing Revolution , a film about Estonia's peaceful struggle for political independence from Soviet occupation. [58] It has with 18.000 viewers become the most successful documentary film in Estonian box-office history. [59]
Halvorssen produced The Dissident in 2020, a film about the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, directed by Bryan Fogel. [60]
Title | Year | Role |
---|---|---|
Hammer & Tickle | 2006 | executive producer |
Freedom's Fury | 2006 | producer |
The Singing Revolution | 2006 | producer |
The Sugar Babies | 2007 | producer |
Indoctrinate U | 2007 | producer |
2081 | 2009 | producer |
Pups of Liberty | 2009 | executive producer |
U.N. Me | 2009 | executive producer |
State of Control | 2016 | producer |
The Dissident | 2020 | producer [61] |
John Strausbaugh described as a Halvorssen as a "conservative operating in fields more often associated with liberals .. who champions the underdog". [1] Neoconservative columnist James Kirchick described Halvorssen as having a "burning desire to right the countless injustices of this world". [62]
The magazine The Economist pointed 2010 out that the Oslo Freedom Forum strucks a different tone than organisations like Amnestry International or Human Rights Watch. "Given his conservative ideas, Mr Halvorssen's list of heroes and rogues might differ from that of say, Claudio Cordone, the acting head of Amnesty". It praised their event as being spectacular, competition and "on its way to becoming a human-rights equivalent of the Davos economic forum". [63]
University of Pennsylvania president Judith Rodin honored Halvorssen's achievements by awarding him the Sol Feinstone Award for protecting student speech. [64] In 2010 Romanian leader Emil Constantinescu presented Halvorssen with a presidential silver medal to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the Romanian Revolution of 1989. "On behalf of those who fought and died for freedom, I present this medal to the Oslo Freedom Forum founder, and remind those here that even if Romanians live in democracy now, we cannot feel entirely free as long as other people – who live under dictatorial and repressive regimes anywhere in the world – are not also be free."[ citation needed ]
In 2018, Halvorssen was awarded the Millennium Candler Justice Prize, honoring leadership in effecting positive social change, presented at the Millennium Gate Museum. [65]
Peter Godwin is a Zimbabwean author, journalist, screenwriter, documentary filmmaker, and former human rights lawyer. Best known for his writings concerning the breakdown of his native Zimbabwe, he has reported from more than 60 countries and written several books. He served as president of PEN American Center from 2012 to 2015 and resides in Manhattan, New York.
Eduardo Mendoza Goiticoa was a Venezuelan scientific researcher and agricultural engineer. He served the government of Rómulo Betancourt, becoming the youngest cabinet minister in Venezuelan history at the age of 28. His appointment was problematic due to his young age and required a constitutional amendment. Betancourt had insisted on the appointment and vastly expanded the portfolio of the Secretary of Agriculture to include all immigration matters.
Leopoldo Eduardo López Mendoza is a Venezuelan opposition leader. López was elected mayor of the Chacao Municipality of Caracas in the regional elections held in July 2000. He is the National Coordinator of another political party, Voluntad Popular, which he founded in 2009. He is a Venezuelan politician, economist, and sociologist.
The Human Rights Foundation (HRF) is a non-profit organization that focuses on promoting and protecting human rights globally, with an emphasis on closed societies. HRF organizes the Oslo Freedom Forum. The Human Rights Foundation was founded in 2005 by Thor Halvorssen Mendoza, a Venezuelan film producer and human rights advocate. The current chairman is Russian opposition activist Yulia Navalnaya, and Javier El-Hage is the current chief legal officer. The foundation's head office is in the Empire State Building in New York City.
Liu Xiaobo was a Chinese literary critic, human rights activist, philosopher and Nobel Peace Prize laureate who called for political reforms and was involved in campaigns to end Chinese Communist Party one-party rule in China. He was arrested numerous times, and was described as China's most prominent dissident and the country's most famous political prisoner. On 26 June 2017, he was granted medical parole after being diagnosed with liver cancer; he died a few weeks later on 13 July 2017.
Thor Halvorssen Hellum was a Venezuelan-Norwegian businessman who was CEO and President of the Venezuelan state-owned telephone company CANTV, and later was "special commissioner for international narcotic affairs" in the administration of President Carlos Andrés Pérez, holding the rank of Ambassador. While investigating links to money laundering and drug trafficking, he was imprisoned on charges of terrorism, though he was later cleared of all charges. Halvorssen's case was taken up by Amnesty International and other international human rights organizations. After his release, Halvorssen moved with his family to Miami, where he lived until his death.
Thor Halvorssen may refer to:
Charter 08 is a manifesto initially signed by 303 Chinese dissident intellectuals and human rights activists. It was published on 10 December 2008, the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopting its name and style from the anti-Soviet Charter 77 issued by dissidents in Czechoslovakia. Since its release, more than 10,000 people inside and outside China have signed the charter. After unsuccessful reform efforts in 1989 and 1998 by the Chinese democracy movement, Charter 08 was the first challenge to one-party rule that declared the end of one-party rule to be its goal; it has been described as the first one with a unified strategy.
Oslo Freedom Forum (OFF) is a series of global conferences run by the New York–based non-profit Human Rights Foundation under the slogan "Challenging Power". OFF was founded in 2009 as a one-time event and has taken place annually ever since. The forum aims to bring together notable people, including former heads of state, winners of the Nobel Peace Prize, prisoners of conscience, as well as of other public figures in order to network and exchange ideas about human rights and exposing dictatorships.
Inciting subversion of state power is a crime under the law of the People's Republic of China. It is article 105, paragraph 2 of the 1997 revision of the People's Republic of China's Penal Code.
Freedom's Fury is a documentary film about the semifinal water polo match between Hungary and the USSR at the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia. The match took place against the background of the Hungarian Revolution, that was brutally crushed by the Soviet army, and it quickly turned into a violent battle, with contemporaries dubbing it the "Blood in the Water match."
Liu Xia is a Chinese painter, poet, and photographer. Liu Xia was under effective house arrest in China as her husband, Liu Xiaobo, had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010. She remained under house arrest until 10 July 2018, when she was allowed to travel to Germany for medical treatment.
The 2010 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to imprisoned Chinese human rights activist Liu Xiaobo (1955–2017) "for his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China". The laureate, once an eminent scholar, was reportedly little-known inside the People's Republic of China (PRC) at the time of the award due to official censorship; he partook in the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 and was a co-author of the Charter 08 manifesto, for which he was sentenced to 11 years in prison on 25 December 2009. Liu, who was backed by former Czech president Václav Havel and anti-apartheid activist and cleric Desmond Tutu, also a Nobel Peace Prize winner, received the award among a record field of more than 200 nominees.
Maryam Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja is a Bahraini-Danish human rights activist. She is the daughter of the Bahraini human rights activist Abdulhadi al-Khawaja and former co-director of the Gulf Center for Human Rights (GCHR). She is currently the Special Advisor on Advocacy with the GCHR, and works as a consultant with NGOs. She's a board member of the International Service for Human Rights and No Hiding Place. She serves as the Vice Chair on the Board of the Urgent Action Fund.
Václav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent is an award established in 2012 by the New York City-based Human Rights Foundation (HRF). According to HRF President Thor Halvorssen, the prize recognizes individuals "who engage in creative dissent, exhibiting courage and creativity to challenge injustice and live in truth".
Carlos Javier El-Hage is an international attorney admitted to practice in the state of New York, United States.
Jared Genser is an international human rights lawyer who serves as managing director of the law firm Perseus Strategies, LLC, Special Advisor on the Responsibility to Protect to the Organization of American States, and Co-Founder and General Counsel to the Neurorights Foundation. Genser is U.S. Chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, where he was previously a Senior Fellow. Referred to by the New York Times as "The Extractor," he has served as pro bono counsel to five Nobel Peace Prize Laureates, including the last three Laureates who won their Prize while imprisoned- Aung San Suu Kyi, Liu Xiaobo, and Ales Bialiatski -- as well as Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Elie Wiesel. Other former clients have included former Czech Republic President Václav Havel, Malaysia Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, Venezuelan politician Leopoldo López, and former Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed. He was previously an associate of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University from 2014 to 2016 and a visiting fellow with the National Endowment for Democracy from 2006 to 2007. Coming from his experience freeing a political prisoner as a law student in 2001, he founded the non-profit Freedom Now and earlier in his career was named by the National Law Journal as one of "40 Under 40: Washington's Rising Stars."
No Enemies, No Hatred is a book by Nobel Peace Prize-winning writer and activist Liu Xiaobo which contains a wide selection of his writings and poetry between 1989 and 2009. It was published in 2012 by the Belknap Press, an imprint of Harvard University Press. It was edited by Perry Link, Tienchi Martin-Liao and Liu Xiaobo's wife Liu Xia, and includes a foreword written by Václav Havel. The volume marks the inaugural English-language collection of Liu's work.
The Magnitsky Human Rights Awards are international awards that recognise journalists, politicians, and activists in the field of human rights, named in honour of Sergei Magnitsky.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)