HRF and Activist María Conchita Alonso to Discuss Oliver Stone's Documentary on Fox Business News Tonight

NEW YORK (July 6, 2010) - Human Rights Foundation (HRF) President Thor Halvorssen will appear tonight on Fox Business News with David Asman to discuss Oliver Stone’s new film about Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, as well as Stone’s failure to acknowledge the appalling human rights record under that leader’s regime. Halvorssen will appear alongside María Conchita Alonso, a Cuban-Venezuelan actress and activist who has already expressed strong criticism over the film’s factual inaccuracies. The show airs tonight at 7:00 PM EDT, with the segment running toward the end of the show.

In recent years, HRF—along with most international human rights organizations—has repeatedly denounced the erosion of democracy and the systematic violation of human rights in Venezuela under the authoritarian rule of Hugo Chávez. Since 2007, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights have repeatedly convicted the Venezuelan government of violating freedom of expression and freedom of association in order to silence all possible dissent. But according to the New York Times, Stone’s film, South of the Border, presents the President of Venezuela as a “benevolent, generous, tolerant and courageous leader who has been unjustly maligned” by the media in the United States. It is this discrepancy that Halvorssen and Alonso intend to discuss this evening on Fox.

HRF is an international nonpartisan organization devoted to defending human rights in the Americas. It centers its work on the twin concepts of freedom of self-determination and freedom from tyranny. These ideals include the belief that all human beings have the rights to speak freely, to associate with those of like mind, and to leave and enter their countries. Individuals in a free society must be accorded equal treatment and due process under law, and must have the opportunity to participate in the governments of their countries; HRF’s ideals likewise find expression in the conviction that all human beings have the right to be free from arbitrary detainment or exile and from interference and coercion in matters of conscience. HRF does not support nor condone violence. HRF’s International Council includes former prisoners of conscience Vladimir Bukovsky, Palden Gyatso, Václav Havel, Mutabar Tadjibaeva, Ramón J. Velásquez, Elie Wiesel, and Harry Wu.

Contact: Thor Halvorssen, Human Rights Foundation, (212) 246.8486, info@thehrf.org