[Foundation-l] Concern for the safety of Wikimedians at Wikimania in Alexandria.

[Dan Rosenthal]

When the Wikimedia Foundation puts us in a situation that our mere  
existence is offensive to others, and our mere existence in a country  
endangers our safety, it's a good sign we should not be holding  
conferences there. Being openly jewish, gay, or a westernized woman is  
offensive to some in Egypt, and unless one is forced to subject  
themselves to coercive rules and limitations that, I should mention,  
fundamentally violate standard human rights, then their safety cannot  
be guaranteed.

I don't know how this isn't clear to you Gerard. When we have a  
situation where our conference attendee's sexual preferences, gender,  
religion, and birth country must hidden or denied, in order to assure  
their safety, we simply should NOT be hosting conferences there. It is  
an implicit statement that Wikimedia does not support human rights --  
the right to freedom of religion, freedom of nationality, freedom of  
sexual preference, and freedom from gender discrimination. It's  
absolutely unacceptable to say "Instead of admitting that we picked a  
stupid place to host a conference, we're going to stand by it and  
force our conference goers to choose between their safety, and their  
human rights." That's a fundamentally wrong thing for the Wikimedia  
Foundation to do, but it's precisely what they've been doing.

-Dan

On Mar 3, 2008, at 6:09 PM, Gerard Meijssen wrote:

> In the end it is about freedom. The freedom that is available to you
> is limited by the freedom available to others. When you insist on  
> behaving
> in a manner that is offensive to others your safety can not be
> guaranteed. The rights and the treatment that you take for granted  
> in your
> normal environment is not necessarily what will be available in other
> environments. This is rather elementary I would say.