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As I board the aircraft departing Gardermoen Airport in Oslo, Norway, the heaviness and warmth of the recent week envelop me.
The Oslo Freedom Forum transcends the term conference. It’s not merely a summit. It’s something more challenging to label and even tougher to articulate — a gathering of bravery, honesty, and resistance that pierces through the chaos of modern life, compelling you to listen, feel, and take action.
For the second occasion, I depart this metropolis even more convinced that something relentless is emerging. That amidst the censorship, surveillance, and governmental oppression proliferating worldwide, there exists a counterforce rooted in humanity, quickened by technology, and led by those who have already borne the consequences of speaking out.
The Forum doesn’t traffic in hollow optimism. It presents a distinctive kind of hope, molded from lived reality and woven together by individuals who have faced darkness and still opt to seek the light. A hope emerging from the narratives of people who have endured the worst atrocities that an authoritarian regime can inflict and still choose to advocate for the liberty of others. The experiences shared were intense. At times, heartbreaking. Yet they were not shared for sympathy. They were calls to action.
Just days after she was snatched, blindfolded, tortured, and sexually assaulted in a Tanzanian prison, Agather Atuhaire stood before a crowd of strangers, narrating her story.
Her voice remained steady.
The Ugandan journalist and attorney had traveled to Tanzania in solidarity with fellow East African dissidents, only to be taken away in a dark van alongside Kenyan activist Boniface Mwangi.
And yet, against all odds, she returned. Not only to her homeland in Uganda but also to the stage in Oslo, where she expressed herself calmly and clearly about the meaning of revealing the truth under a dictatorship.
Her presentation, “The Digital Free Speech Crackdown in Uganda,” exposed the authoritarian handbook: social media shutdowns, propaganda initiatives, journalist surveillance, and the gradual financial strangulation of independent media. When the government disapproves of a story, it simply blocks the platform or website. When a journalist probes too deeply, they vanish for a while. Or forever. Atuhaire illustrated a reality many find hard to even conceive.
And yet, after all she endured, she didn’t merely recount these hardships. She turned to the audience and expressed gratitude to the open-source developers and contributors who write code and create tools that enable activists like her to communicate, transfer funds, and organize under regimes that wish to silence them or worse.
(Ugandan journalist and attorney, Agather Atuhaire, addresses the audience during the Freedom Tech track at the 2025 Oslo Freedom Forum.)
From Iran, independent Bitcoin educator Ziya Sadr reminded us that financial confidentiality is not a luxury but a crucial lifeline for those grappling with financial oppression from tyrannical leaders. Sadr’s detention during the 2022 Women, Life, Freedom movement following the killing of Mahsa Amini by the Iranian regime is testament to that. Lacking financial privacy, the actions, connections, and finances of activists become vulnerable to a regime armed with extensive financial controls and a sophisticated, oppressive internet firewall that rivals even China’s.
The outcome is one of the most oppressive digital environments globally. And if that weren’t sufficient, the Iranian rial currency has plummeted by more than 80% in just a few years.
In this context, Iranians are turning to bitcoin for unassailable savings and to purchase digital services like VPNs to access the open internet. Yet even that act, merely reaching the outside world, necessitates a level of privacy that many of us take for granted.
In his presentation, “Securing Lifelines: The Bitcoin Privacy Imperative,” Sadr revealed that many Iranians resort to Bitcoin Coinjoins, a privacy technique that obscures the connection between Bitcoin transaction inputs. Coinjoins safeguard user transaction privacy and, more critically, protect Iranians from the surveillance and retribution of a government that punishes anyone attempting to access information beyond its tightly governed digital domains. The use of Coinjoins is becoming increasingly challenging as global legal pressure mounts against open-source developers, and in the wake of the Samourai developer arrests, privacy protocols like Whirlpool are becoming impractical.
Today, Sadr is delving more into additional Bitcoin privacy tools, including Payjoin, a privacy technique that permits two users to contribute an input to a Bitcoin transaction. Payjoin disrupts common chain analysis heuristics and conceals the sender and receiver of a transaction as well as the payment amount. Then there is ecash, a form of digital cash supported by Bitcoin that allows for highly private, everyday transactions with the custodial trade-off of relying on mints (entities that issue and redeem ecash tokens) to safeguard user funds.
The ongoing advancement of these protocols is vital for Iranians, who endure a government that not only monitors and surveils digital conduct but also enforces automatic fines on women for contravening hijab regulations and manipulates currency exchange rates to profit off citizens’ savings. For countless individuals in Iran, bitcoin represents a final defense against a failing currency, invasive surveillance, and complete financial oppression.
(Independent Iranian Bitcoin educator, Ziya Sadr, talks during the Freedom Tech segment at the Oslo Freedom Forum.)
Venezuelan dissent leader Leopoldo López addressed the audience at the 2025 Oslo Freedom Forum, not in the capacity of a politician, but as a witness to the outcomes when a state transforms its institutions into extensions of its repression apparatus.
Following Nicolás Maduro’s usurpation of Venezuela’s 2024 elections, López observed as thousands of his compatriots — activists, students, journalists, opposition figures, and lawyers — were apprehended, vanished, or exiled. The regime prohibited access to social media, rescinded passports, criminalized dissent, and utilized the financial system to dominate the populace.
In the midst of this digital suppression and Venezuela’s 162% inflation rate, López regards bitcoin (decentralized currency) and Nostr (decentralized social platform) as vital resources. When dictators cut off the internet or freeze one’s bank account, alternatives that are open source, decentralized, uncensorable, and accessible become crucial for the existence of democracy and freedom.
“Decentralized resistance is the unification of individuals, Bitcoin, Nostr, and AI.
It’s fundamentally about the center and the essence of our actions.
Valiant men and women who forfeit their freedom, take risks, and are willing to advocate for others.
If it’s not about individuals, technology wouldn’t hold any significance worth striving for.
Bitcoin symbolizes monetary freedom. It is decentralized, uncontrollable, and can traverse without borders.”
(Venezuelan Opposition Leader Leopoldo López during the Freedom Tech segment at the 2025 Oslo Freedom Forum.)
For years, Paraguay’s prime natural asset, hydroelectric power, has been exported through international accords, promoting growth in neighboring nations such as Brazil and Argentina, while one in four Paraguayans have remained ensnared in poverty. Paraguay’s Itaipu Dam, one of the largest globally, has long epitomized this contradiction: a flow of energy diverted from those who need it most.
Björn Schmidtke and Delia Garcete of Penguin Group are reversing this narrative.
In a historic initiative, they secured Paraguay’s inaugural 100-megawatt power purchase agreement, heralding a daring experiment to reclaim this energy for the citizens of Paraguay. Instead of selling it to foreign entities, they harness it for Bitcoin mining — with the earnings benefiting Paraguay’s youth.
(Itaipu dam, Paraguay)
Emerging from the hum of active ASICs and the clamor of the Itaipu turbines is Penguin Academy, a free software development institution that empowers young Paraguayans to…
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with programming, creation, and technical expertise. Over 10,000 learners have enrolled, among them 800 women; more than 3,000 have completed their studies. Furthermore, over 85% of the graduates from their Code Pro program are currently employed in the technology sector.
What was previously discarded or sent abroad is now being converted into liberty and a promising future. Through bitcoin, Paraguay’s unused energy is returning home.
Rushan Abbas is a Uyghur activist who has dedicated years to sounding the alarm about the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to obliterate her community. During the Freedom Tech session, she spoke as a human rights advocate and as a sister whose sibling, Dr. Gulshan Abbas, was taken by the CCP in 2018 and has not been heard from since. Her tone was steady, but her messages were profound.
Abbas portrayed a territory transformed into a digital and physical prison. The Uyghur homeland, East Turkistan, has been deliberately crafted into one of the globe’s most advanced police states, utilizing mass surveillance, facial recognition technology, police checkpoints, asset confiscation, enforced marriages, sterilization, and forced labor not merely to dominate the Uyghur population, but to obliterate them.
As Rushan articulates: “Disrupt their ancestry, sever their roots, dismantle their connections, and erase their origins.”
Rushan underscored that financial control is crucial to the CCP’s tactics. Uyghurs face frozen assets and bank accounts, confiscated land, and taken homes. They are denied any means to save, transact, or establish generational wealth, and are compelled into state-run labor initiatives under the pretext of “poverty alleviation.”
Rushan reminds us that the plight of the Uyghurs is not theoretical. It’s a deliberate, systematic erasure executed with advanced technology and economic oppression. Her sister’s disappearance is one of countless silenced lives, yet she refuses to allow it to fade from memory. In Oslo, Rushan stood not just as an observer, but her words served as a cautionary note: When a government can track every transaction, monitor every citizen, and control every movement, it doesn’t merely suppress but completely dismantles the very essence of a people’s identity, independence, and future.
(Uyghur activist Rushan Abbas speaks during the Freedom Tech track at the 2025 Oslo Freedom Forum.)
For these reasons and more, you don’t depart the Oslo Freedom Forum feeling disheartened. You leave with the reminder that truth outweighs propaganda, that code can safeguard life, and that resistance is not merely possible — it is already underway.
And if you’re lucky enough to reside where expressing oneself freely or transferring money doesn’t pose a life-threatening risk, you’re reminded of the privilege associated with that freedom and the duty you have to support those who are still striving for it.
This year, I sensed a palpable wave of energy surrounding freedom tech. As previously mentioned, human rights advocates and dissidents did not only discuss the suppression they faced. They highlighted the hope surrounding the tools that assist them in peacefully resisting: Bitcoin, Nostr, privacy solutions, open-source AI models, unblocked VPNs — instruments that operate in secrecy, beyond firewalls, around embargoes, and across borders. Tools that establish an alternative system, where the rights to transact, communicate, organize, and resist cannot be revoked at the click of a button.
These are the tools sustaining movements, delivering resources to dissidents, and shielding at-risk voices. And behind every tool is a silent creator, a pseudonymous contributor, or an open-source developer who may never take the spotlight but is equally integral to the narrative.
The Oslo Freedom Forum is not just a collection of voices. It’s a frontline, a space where a future is formed by those who refuse to yield. And what arises from that gathering is a straightforward, irrefutable truth: Authoritarianism evolves, but we do too. With Bitcoin, with open-source resources, with decentralized networks, with unwavering bravery.
At 30,000 feet, far above the clamor and borders they attempt to impose, one truth stands clear: No authoritarian regime, no matter how harsh or financially backed, has ever succeeded in eradicating the human yearning for freedom. The Oslo Freedom Forum exemplifies that. And if you’re observant, it also offers a preview of what lies ahead.
This is not the conclusion. It’s merely the commencement of the next chapter. One penned not by the powerful, but by the liberated.
Onward.
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