Aude wrote: > In this thread, I see people raising the issues regarding the Egyptian > government. As we know, it's not a democracy and the Egyptian people > did not choose the government. The government there is more repressive, > but not so much so (like Burma) that we can't have Wikimania there. To > penalize Egyptian Wikimedians (and those from Jordan and other nearby > places), for what their government does is not cool with me. >
Well from what I'm gathering the scary part is that the vocal ones get jailed. Now, if you have someone like Jimmy Whales show up in a country that he has previously denounced the policies of the government of which has a tendency to put those people like that in jail, how can we be certain that the government isn't going to have some people that attend the conference who will start arresting people that are speaking or having conversations about things that the Egyptian government wants oppressed? I attended the first two conferences and I remember some very heated and controversial conversations that people enjoyed being apart of and discussing (including problems of the current global wars, the censorship of wikipedia in certain counteries, etc.) and it would be very disconcerting to have to be watching what we say in egypt to make sure we don't end up in jail. so in short, I believe the question is what guarantees will the attendees and speakers have that they will not be arrested even if they say something that the government doesn't agree with? Important note: I'm going off from the limited knowledge of what I've read in this thread and of some of the concerns listed with the bid and a brief search on google about some of the arrests made since 2000 that were publicized. I do not know the current state of politics of Egypt. If this isn't how the government normally operates then just tell me to shutup :) cheers, Kyle _______________________________________________ Wikimania-l mailing list [email protected] http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
