Largest Digital Human Rights Conference Suddenly Canceled
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The linked article states "certain invited speakers and participants remain subject to pending administrative and security clearances, which have not yet been concluded".
I have friends who organise conferences as a $dayjob, including in countries where political and government clearances are required for conferences attended by speakers and participants from external countries.
These clearances are typically required for BOTH the event AND each foreigner individually (and the foreigner will often be unable to even apply for, let alone obtain their visa until they have the clearance).
Lets just say that organising a Human Rights Conference in such a country would probably not be the smartest idea in the world.
Even for an uncontroversial conference, the clearance process is excruciatingly painful. I dread to think what it would entail for a Human Rights conference !
They took the risk. It didn't pay off.
Hope they had solid events insurance to cover all the costs.
Most likely very little. To clearly re-iterate the point I made above ...
1. this is a country which requires political and government clearance for events; and
2. they wanted to host a Human Rights conference
If there was any "interference", that would merely be icing on the cake.
With a conference topic like that, both they and their international speakers would have been enduring tons of perfectly standard bureaucracy and paperwork whilst government departments trawled through people's LinkedIns and social media ... all standard stuff, none of which would be related to "interference".
The bottom-line reality is they should have hosted it in a country that did not require clearance.
The fact that both are equally likely tells you all you need to know about the current state of the USA.
Look, I'm no defender of China but ....
First, read what I already said up-thread. The organisers clearly took a risk, it didn't pay off. If they did not understand the risk they were taking on, that's on them.
Second, Google the agreement referred to in that Twitter post. It was a standard China Belt and Road Financing thing, so super common in Africa that it's barely news.
I really don't think you seriously can pin the Chinese theory on this one.
'Oh its canceled, well shit.. guess we can't do ANYTHING now.'
I could be wrong, but I suspect visas may be affected as well.
The organizers and attendees will try and coordinate something else. However, throwing something together on zoom, at such short notice is going to be a crap show.
The schedules wouldn’t survive unscathed, since speakers will start dropping out at this point.
If they do manage to get something together, they run the real risk of it being a rickety and frustrating event.
What?
The government of the host country said some of the themes were potentially at odds with their national policy, and they weren't sure they liked some of the people involved.
That doesn't sound like anyone was threatened, it sounds like they should have picked somewhere with a stronger tradition of free dialogue.
Where would that be in today's world? Within the past decade, nearly every country in the world has overtly attacked digital freedoms. Can you name one country that has improved digital freedoms during the past decade?
It seems to me that this conference should be held online only, and hosted from an undisclosed location.