TNR Watch: Canceling RightsCon is not Transnational Repression, But It Is an Attack on Transnational Civil Society

Under pressure: In late April, the digital rights organization Access Now announced that its annual RightsCon conference scheduled to take place in Lusaka, Zambia, from May 5 to May 8 had been called off due to pressure from the Chinese government.* The announcement came after Zambian officials had abruptly backtracked on their commitment to host the event—considered the premier civil society gathering on human rights and technology—because Chinese government officials reportedly objected to planned discussion of China’s digital authoritarian practices and the participation of Taiwanese activists. In a statement, Access Now said it was unwilling to “moderate specific topics and exclude communities at risk, including our Taiwanese participants, from in-person and online participation.”

The cancelation of RightsCon, which was set to bring together over 2,600 individuals from more than 100 countries, was not an act of transnational repression. Chinese authorities did not intimidate, seek to harm, or prevent travel by mainland Chinese dissidents or members of targeted diasporas such as Uyghurs. It was, however, the expression of a particularly dangerous form of malign foreign influence that aims to disrupt activists working across borders to generate democratic momentum. Like many forms of transnational repression, pressuring Zambian authorities to exclude Taiwanese participants or silence conversations about digital repression is an effort to project the Chinese Communist Party’s political vision far outside China’s borders.

Attacking activism beyond borders: Chinese authorities are not alone in seeking to break the bonds that connect activists and civil society organizations around the world. Ugandan and Kenyan security services carried out a rendition of 36 Ugandan civil society activists attending a July 2024 leadership seminar in Kenya. A Ugandan court later accused them of visiting Kenya to “to provide or receive terrorist training.” In May 2025, Tanzanian law enforcement similarly deported former Kenyan Justice Minister Martha Karua and two colleagues who had traveled to Tanzania to monitor the court case of imprisoned opposition leader Tundu Lissu, alongside Tanzanian civil society colleagues. Tanzania’s expulsion of the three blocked opportunities for knowledge and information sharing between domestic civil society and foreign representatives.

Resolve: Countries that host civil society convenings or shelter exiled dissidents are likely to continue facing diplomatic and economic pressure from autocrats to abandon their commitments. To maintain their resolve, they require support and solidarity from fellow democratic governments—in the form of greater diplomatic ties and expanded trade and investment, as well as humanitarian assistance. These are long-term commitments that reaffirm the value of global membership in a community of democracies. In the short term, a new host is urgently needed for RightsCon so that this important event for coordination on the most crucial issues facing rights in the digital space can take place, and so that a powerful message can be sent to the Chinese Communist Party and other perpetrators of transnational repression: you cannot silence us.

*Freedom House had planned to attend RightsCon in Lusaka, Zambia.