This reads like a failing part on the organisers to manage such risk, and decided to kick up a stink about it instead of implementing a fallback strategy.
What would your “fallback” be, eight days out? Very curious.
It's no replacement for an in-person conference, but this approach is better than straight up cancelling everything.
You'd take a conference a year in the making and shift it online over a weekend from your hotel room in a developing country? No you would not. I don't blame them for not doing that.
> What the government wanted from us in order to lift the postponement
Anyone who claims a one sided information war has let themself become a casualty of that war.
Largest Digital Human Rights Conference Suddenly Canceled
As much as the west has been shooting itself in the foot lately, discovering that they are still much less subject to interference sounds like a lesson that could have been had for way less money
What the [Zambian] government wanted ... in order for RightsCon to continue, we would have to moderate specific topics and exclude communities at risk, including our Taiwanese participants, from in-person and online participation.
We invested months in building government relationships focused precisely on transparency and mutual understanding, including explicit conversations about the diversity of our community ...
This was our red line. Not because we were unwilling to engage, but because the conditions set before us were unacceptable and counter to what RightsCon is and what Access Now stands for.It's "performative" to explain why?
Do explain.
Another Xi bot on HN. Look forward to dang telling us how it’s not a problem (again).
This strikes as a bit naive. Like a bunch of kids who saw a Disney movie about Zambia and then decided to go there have a RightsCon. Have they seen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBTQ_rights_in_Zambia and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Zambia? I could see if they wanted to sponsor an action there or protest or something but it's unrealistic expecting RightsCon to go without issues there. Unless... the whole point was to show that Zambia would never allow this and they just wanted to "expose it".
One would hope, but their actions don't seem to point to that?
So you might have lost that wager, unless you wagered also that this part of an exposure or performance to highlight the issue. It would be kind of an expensive, round-about way to do then.
> who's read two Wikipedia articles.
I read more https://www.equaldex.com/equality-index?continent=Africa. Zambia is one of the most restrictive countries as far legal rights and how lgbtq-friednl it is. Senegal and Gambia are only "ahead" of it.
Here is another https://www.fandmglobalbarometers.org/wp-content/uploads/202...
> Zambia has received a score of F..."
If wikipedia are not enough another 10 sources probably not going to convince anyone. That's my wager :-)
> We invested months in building government relationships focused precisely on transparency and mutual understanding, including explicit conversations about the diversity of our community. If this foundation was somehow deemed insufficient, we are left to ask: why was that not communicated to us earlier, rather than only five days before our participants were due to arrive?
> This was our red line. Not because we were unwilling to engage, but because the conditions set before us were unacceptable and counter to what RightsCon is and what Access Now stands for. The manner of the government’s communications process this week also raised serious questions as to the integrity, forthrightness, and value of any future engagement based on good faith
I can't read that as anything but being naive and not being able to read between the lines.