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

Tue Mar 4 05:10:11 UTC 2008

On Mon, Mar 3, 2008 at 6:22 PM, Dan Rosenthal <swatjester at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
>

Hypothetically, if the conference is actually putting attendees at
significant security risk due to terrorism, or those with alternative
lifestyles or sexual preferences at significant risk, then perhaps a
re-siting decision would be called for.

What was in evidence after the previous discussion about the latter issues
was vague unease, not evidence that there was actual serious risk there.

What is in evidence now about the security situation is vague unease, not
evidence that there's serious risk there.

Please don't turn vague unease into a mad rush to abandon the site.  If
anyone participating happens to be a private or governmental intelligence
analyst or counterterrorism professional with middle east experience, or
know people who are, it might help if you talk to the Foundation and input
what you know.

I am acutely aware of the history and issues involved, in religious, local
political, geopolitical, and local and regional terrorist incident history,
but I don't have any current useful intelligence or background to do an
event risk assessment.

Unless someone with that experience and those specific skills is willing to
publically comment here, we're operating the thread without a competent
level of knowledge to hold a serious discussion on the topic.

I oppose hyperbolic conversations eminating from vague unease.

-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com