Firing Line is on the road as host Margaret Hoover sits down with three dissidents during the Human Rights Foundation’s Oslo Freedom Forum in Miami for a discussion on the global fight against human rights abuses.
Hatice Cengiz is the fianceé of slain Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. She has inherited his fight for human rights after his murder three years ago at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in an operation U.S. intelligence says was approved by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. She tells Margaret justice for Jamal means he “shouldn’t be king.”
Former Venezuelan political prisoner Leopoldo Lopez, who was jailed for years for challenging the Maduro regime, explains that “authoritarianism is on the rise” and tells Margaret that the U.S. needs to lead other democracies in opposition. “Americans need to understand that they have a responsibility to the rest of the world to promote and to defend freedom.”
Uyghur activist Jewher Ilham’s father was “symbol of the voice of the Uyghurs” until 2013 when he was detained by Chinese authorities and given a life sentence. Ilham has expanded her fight beyond her father’s case — and is now speaking for more than a million Uyghurs facing similar mistreatment. “What is happening in China to the Uyghurs, it is a humanitarian crisis,” she says, calling for legislative action in Congress.
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