[Foundation-l] [Wikimania-l] Wikimania 2008 will happen in Alexandria, Egypt

[Brian]

Human rights is a global problem.

http://www.amnestyusa.org/Our_Issues/By_Country/page.do?id=1041024&n1=3&n2=30

You've got to pick your battles. Persecution of those in the GLBT community
is not going to stop in Egypt if we boycott holding Wikimania there because
of it. While it's possible to go and rank each country by some factor of
abuses, it's more reasonable, and beneficial to the Wikimedia Foundation, to
multiply out the common denominator (the worst possible cases
notwithstanding). If anything, Egypt needs Wikimania to be there to
facilitate the spread of information in order to counter these deeply rooted
biases. If you really want to spread information somewhere, the best
possible way is a physical presence.

On 10/9/07, David Strauss <david at fourkitchens.com> wrote:
>
> phoebe ayers wrote:
> > On 10/9/07, David Strauss <david at fourkitchens.com> wrote:
> >> Cary Bass wrote:
> >>> The Jury for Wikimania 2008 bids have met and are pleased to announce
> >>> that Wikimania 2008 will be held in Alexandria, Egypt.
> >> I'm offended that the desire to have Wikimania hop around the globe
> >> (rotation) trumps the egregious history Egypt has with LGBT and other
> >> civil rights (local laws). While visitors to Egypt are certainly not at
> >> the same risk, I refuse to spend any money in a country that -- as
> >> recently as 2004 -- sentenced someone to 17 years of prison and two
> >> years of hard labor for posting a personal ad on a gay website[1]. A
> >> blogger was imprisoned in 2007 for four years for "insulting Islam and
> >> defaming the President of Egypt."[2] Jimmy Wales even attended the
> >> Amnesty conference denouncing the censorship. No legal or cultural
> >> reforms since give me confidence that the situation has improved.
> >>
> >> Wikimedia and its projects have an abundance of people from
> marginalized
> >> groups and political advocacy organizations participating at every
> >> level. A place that persecutes, censors, and prosecutes such groups
> >> under the banner of snuffing out "Satanism" is not a location that
> >> affirms the pluralism and intellectual freedom of Wikimedia.
> >>
> >> People raised these objections early in the bidding process, but I have
> >
> > As a jury member, I do not remember any comments from you on this
> > subject, David; perhaps I missed them. At any rate, what are you
> > trying to accomplish by sending this message after the winner was
> > announced, and not before when we were discussing the bids?
>
> Other people raised these objections during the bidding process; I
> didn't have to. Even if no one had brought the issue up, everyone on the
> voting team should have been aware enough of the problems to them under
> consideration without further prompting.
>
> I thought it was a foregone conclusion that Egypt's human rights record
> would cripple the bid enough that it wouldn't win.
>
> > Wikimania and Wikimedia are both global in scope, which means that
> > while we can condemn censorship and loss of human rights everywhere
>
> So the "condemnation" amounts to docking a modest number of points for
> "local laws"?
>
> > we must also take into account a global range of values.
>
> What is this supposed to mean? How can we balance condemnation with
> toleration?
>
> > Our projects
> > focus specifically on free knowledge, and I expect that will be
> > highlighted at the conference.
>
> Even putting gay rights aside, Egypt's record of imprisoning political
> and religious dissidents is directly counter to affirming "free
> knowledge."
>
>
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