A few weeks ago, I had crossed the Atlantic and found myself in Frankfurt. I was there to speak on a panel about “authoritarian intelligence” (yet another of the alternative takes on what the letters AI could stand for), but it was just the first stop on a much longer trip.

After a few days in Germany, I was due to head south to Zambia for a meeting of environmental and anti-data center activists that was scheduled to take place in the days before RightsCon — the major digital rights conference put on by Access Now. Since I was going to be there anyway, I was planning to check it out too. But then I got an email that threw those plans into jeopardy.

The Zambian government had, seemingly out of nowhere, decided to “postpone” RightsCon just days before thousands of people were due to arrive in Lusaka, the Zambian capital, to take part in days of discussions about the state of digital technology and human rights. In fact, some attendees had already arrived and organizers later revealed immigration officials were telling them the conference was canceled — before any official notification had been provided by government officials. Happening that close to when it was due to start, a postponement was just another word for cancellation.

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The initial shock gave way to questions about what had happened, and why the government would cancel the event at all. The statements they released alluded to security checks not having been completed for speakers and needing to know more about the subjects that would be discussed at the gathering. People speculated about whether it had something to do with the forthcoming election — maybe the government didn’t want to be criticized by a bunch of foreign experts on its own soil — or because they belatedly realized how many queer and trans people would be descending on their country. Zambia is one of many counties where it’s still illegal to be in same-sex relationships.

To their credit, Access Now was quick in sharing the real reason once it was clear the conference would not be going ahead. The Zambian government had come under pressure from China to shut down the event, as Taiwanese speakers would be represented at the conference. “What the government wanted from us in order to lift the postponement was conveyed to us informally from multiple sources: 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,” wrote the organizers.

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