[Applause]
So I'm going to tell you briefly about a speaker that was here
several years ago and talked about Nicaragua.
Nicaragua is one of the three fully authoritarian regimes in the Western Hemisphere.
The other two of course are Cuba and Venezuela.
And the current dictator of Nicaragua was elected and he did the same thing
that Hugo Chavez did in Venezuela, which was slowly dismantle the democracy.
And there are people like Felix Maradiaga, who came to
the Oslo Freedom Forum and warned
over and over again, that this was happening in 2019.
He came here he spoke.
And the last event he had internationally,
before he returned to Nicaragua was speaking at the Oslo Freedom Forum.
He went back to Nicaragua, began organizing against
the regime of Daniel Ortega, a very brutal murderous regime,
and he announced that he was going to run for president.
And this man is so incredibly dangerous that as soon as he announced he was going to run
for president, he was placed under house arrest and that wasn't enough.
So, they put him into a maximum security prison, where he was for three years.
It's very difficult for us the Freedom Forum, because unlike other conferences,
this is one, where sadly people sometimes are imprisoned, tortured, or even assassinated.
In the case of Felix, he stood his ground.
He was eventually
freed after a very big campaign seeking his freedom along with many other political prisoners.
And the dictatorship in what was clearly a logistical real faux pas by them, when
they were expelled from Nicaragua, recently, they were expelled, and had their citizenships revoked.
Just to give you a taste of what that government will do to the people, who tell the truths.
They will even make them stateless.
So we have a very moving video of Felix right after he was freed and seeing his
daughter and his wife for the very first time, after which we will welcome him to the stage.
Please enjoy this very moving video.
My name is Felix Maradiaga, from Nicaragua,
and I was here in this very same town at the Oslo Freedom Forum in 2019.
In that occasion, I presented some ideas to many of you here.
And one of the ideas is that dictatorships are becoming more sophisticated.
I talked about dictatorships 2.0.
Dictatorships know that they can inflict a lot of pain,
emotional pain, in families, and distract activists of their work.
I also said that for non-violent movements to be successful, they require of a lifeline.
They require for the International Community to care.
So, I went back to Nicaragua.
I continued to work on my non-violent movement against dictator Daniel Ortega,
who came back to power in 2007.
And since then has been inflicting a lot of pain on the Nicaraguan community.
He has expelled out of the country,
over 3000 non-profits, including many charitable organizations.
He shut down 20 universities.
He has killed close to 400 people, including 45 students.
He has persecuted the Catholic church and currently my own Bishop Señor Rolando Alvarez,
who spoke many times for my release.
He is currently in prison facing a sentence of 26 years in prison.
This reminded me of my years back, in 1997, when I was working in government.
And I will speak about that situation,
I was working with child soldiers prior to my involvement in the non-violent movement.
But let's revisit my return to Nicaragua.
I went back.
I launched my political campaign and announced my intentions to run
as president, representing a broad movement of reconciliation, unification of Nicaragua.
I was, very few months later, placed in house arrest.
Later arrested, under charges of treason.
And for 611 agonizing days, I was denied of a right of a lawyer.
I didn't have any readings, of writing materials.
I was placed in one of the most outrageous maximum security prisons in Latin America.
I endured things I am not yet prepared to talk about in public.
But the most painful thing I suffered,
was not been allowed to have a Bible—important to my faith—not
being allowed to have a letter or at least a phone call with my daughter and my wife Berta.
Even my drinking water had to be delivered daily, my daily quota of drinking water,
had to be delivered personally by my sister, every day outside of the prison,
alongside the other political prisoners.
So, I promised myself in those very hard moments that I wanted to share
with you a follow-up of my conversation in 2019.
Dictators know that by imprisoning dissidents they distract political movements.
My wife, Berta Valle, became a relentless advocate for my freedom and this is happening, yes.
This is happening around the world.
I see so many children of political prisoners, family members, lawyers,
such as my own human rights, Jared Genser, who I really appreciate his work, friends and
volunteers, at the Human Rights Foundation, Oslo Freedom Forum, working for a release.
But what happens is that political movements that want reform,
they need to stop for some time, to talk about reforms in health and education.
We cannot tackle as we want other complicated issues, such as anti-corruption, transparency,
electoral reform, because we must work around the issue of arbitrary detention.
So I wanted to present to you an idea.
I will do an analogy with my work back in 1997.
I was 20 years old,
and I noticed in my job in disarmament that many of the survivals of the civil war in Nicaragua,
had lost their lower limbs due to anti-personal landmines.
The question is, why?
Well, because landmines were not technically designed to kill, but to mutilate.
Because those that designed anti-personal landmines,
wanted to inflict enormous pain on the combatants, even after the war had ended.
There was a massive international movement, civil society,
not from governments, but from civi society, to ban landmines
because of the suffering that they create, even after the war.
That is what dictators are doing.
They have a new political weapon, called arbitrary detention.
We can do the same that happened with the Ottawa Convention.
We can create a global movement against arbitrary detention from civil society.
I will invite you towards the end of my talk to end arbitrary detention.
And we are telling the story of our own Bishop, Bishop Rolando Alvarez.
But to do something like this, we need to protect our heart.
My message to human rights defenders, around the world,
the first battle that we need to win,
is the battle against the very human emotion of revenge.
Because we cannot build new societies, fair, and just, countries, out of hatred.
From my own personal, painful experience, I know that this is very hard
in the moments of loneliness, deprivation of food, and water, torture.
The feeling of Revenge is normal, and don't get me wrong,
I believe dictator should go to international criminal court.
But it's not revenge that we want.
It's Justice.
And hatred cannot generate the type of societies, that we want, in which we honor human dignity.
So how do we do that?
The message I want to send to my torturers, to my jailers,
is that I wish for their children, and for their grandchildren,
not to suffer what my daughter Alejandra suffered.
I didn't see her for three years.
I want the grandchildren of even those, who are against me, to live in a free society.
So we need to find that that gives us strength and hope.
Let me introduce you to the person, that gave me that hope.
Alejandra come to stage please.
Alejandra, I want to honor you and your mom, my wife,
the love of my life, Berta, for all the work they did.
I want to honor the children of political prisoners around the world.
And thank you for keeping me alive.
For keeping me committed to love.
Love is not our weakness. It's our strength.
And through love, we're going to build a new society with your help,
ending end arbitrary detention, and working for the release of Bishop Rolando Alvarez.
Would you like to share something.
I just want to be thankful for being here, and for all the people, who have
supported me and my mom, when my dad wasn't here.
And for the people who have supported other political prisoners.
Nicaragua will be free.
Thank you.