Comment by PradeetPatel
23 days ago
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.
They weren’t told of any issues because there weren’t any issues until the Chinese government started applying pressure to Zambia.
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.
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