Government put their national interest ahead of NGO organisations should not come as a surprise to anyone.
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.
It's Friday and the conference is Tuesday. Half their people, it sounds like, at least, are on the ground in Zambia already.
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.
Fun fact: Zambia’s GDP per capita was greater than China’s in 1975. So there’s a parallel universe where a human rights conference in China gets cancelled because of Zambian influence.
I don't think there's a reasonable possible world where whatever government controls the land area of Zambia overtakes whatever government controls the land area of China in the long term, regardless of what the GDP per capita metrics specifically looked like in 1975. The discrepancies that make Chinese civilization more prone to being globally-influential than central African civilization (like "rice agriculture") are at least thousands of years old.
> We are disappointed that our international participants won’t get to experience the Zambia we have come to know through our planning for RightsCon
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 of the key reasons that college campuses no longer talk about Tibet and certainly don't talk about Taiwan or dare I even mention the Uygers or anything else mainland China related is of course that Chinese influence is a 10,000 pound gorilla. When you look at it more closely you realize Qatar, Turkey, Iran, and Russia influence campaigns all perfectly complement China's objectives to avoid themselves being a focus on human rights related topics
Human rights are a pretext of US controlled media to advocate for expanding US imperial interests. Notice how US support of Israel, Gulf state dictatorships, South American dictatorships are glossed over whenever warmongering toward China or Iran is advocated with the thin excuse being human rights.
Anyone who claims a one sided information war has let themself become a casualty of that war.
Well you can also read around CIA propaganda these days much easier. Maybe this overlaps with the influence campaigns other countries push, but it's not like we actually had humanitarian interest to begin with.
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
All of this sums up why trust and risk concerns are so important. For example if you put your money into a bank in a country that might not exist tomorrow you might wish you had instead put your money into Chase, depending on what events ensue... those Bankers in that other country might charm you up the Wazoo but at the end of the day trust and risk concerns truly matter
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.
Government put their national interest ahead of NGO organisations should not come as a surprise to anyone.
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.
They were not told of any issues until 8 days before the event, this week, after talking to government officials since 2024.
What would your “fallback” be, eight days out? Very curious.
Change the physical conference into a virtual one, this way it respects the speakers, allow people to mingle and ideas to flourish.
It's no replacement for an in-person conference, but this approach is better than straight up cancelling everything.
It's Friday and the conference is Tuesday. Half their people, it sounds like, at least, are on the ground in Zambia already.
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.
It was actually less than eight days out before they knew they were cancelled. It's hard to do something in so little time.
Fallback would be doing
> What the government wanted from us in order to lift the postponement
Take away someone's rights for your rights conference, what could possibly go wrong.
Fun fact: Zambia’s GDP per capita was greater than China’s in 1975. So there’s a parallel universe where a human rights conference in China gets cancelled because of Zambian influence.
I don't think there's a reasonable possible world where whatever government controls the land area of Zambia overtakes whatever government controls the land area of China in the long term, regardless of what the GDP per capita metrics specifically looked like in 1975. The discrepancies that make Chinese civilization more prone to being globally-influential than central African civilization (like "rice agriculture") are at least thousands of years old.
Is there any other African country that’s not this beholden to China?
Who cares what flag capital operates under if you're fucked either way?
Mauritius for one.
Is there any other country that’s not this beholden to China? Welcome to 2026.
> We are disappointed that our international participants won’t get to experience the Zambia we have come to know through our planning for RightsCon
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".
Related:
Largest Digital Human Rights Conference Suddenly Canceled
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47964996
This is why more well known human rights conferences are held in places like Denmark, Sweden and Norway.
Where a huge percentage of participants will have trouble getting visas
Just don't mention Israel.
One of the key reasons that college campuses no longer talk about Tibet and certainly don't talk about Taiwan or dare I even mention the Uygers or anything else mainland China related is of course that Chinese influence is a 10,000 pound gorilla. When you look at it more closely you realize Qatar, Turkey, Iran, and Russia influence campaigns all perfectly complement China's objectives to avoid themselves being a focus on human rights related topics
Human rights are a pretext of US controlled media to advocate for expanding US imperial interests. Notice how US support of Israel, Gulf state dictatorships, South American dictatorships are glossed over whenever warmongering toward China or Iran is advocated with the thin excuse being human rights.
Anyone who claims a one sided information war has let themself become a casualty of that war.
Well you can also read around CIA propaganda these days much easier. Maybe this overlaps with the influence campaigns other countries push, but it's not like we actually had humanitarian interest to begin with.
Hi bot, how is it working for Xi.
Nothing to see here, dang. Keep letting CCP overrun HN.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47905844 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47939045 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47939336
This sounds like a South Park episode
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
All of this sums up why trust and risk concerns are so important. For example if you put your money into a bank in a country that might not exist tomorrow you might wish you had instead put your money into Chase, depending on what events ensue... those Bankers in that other country might charm you up the Wazoo but at the end of the day trust and risk concerns truly matter
tl;dr - It appears that the PRC pressured Zambian officials due to Taiwanese participation in RightsCon.
There's more.
This is so performative.
It’s “performative” to notify attendees of an international conference scheduled for next week that it will be cancelled?
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).
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47891877
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47779056