Chinese Embassy Pressures Zambia to Cancel RightsCon 2026

On April 28, 2026, Zambia’s state-owned media announced the postponement of RightsCon 2026, the world’s largest digital human rights conference, which had been scheduled to take place at the Mulungushi Conference Center in Lusaka from May 5–8. The cancellation came after the Chinese Embassy in Zambia pressured the Government of Zambia over the planned participation of Taiwanese civil society at the event. According to Access Now, the New York-based organizer, Zambia’s Ministry of Technology and Science communicated on April 27 that Chinese diplomats were objecting to Taiwanese participants, and that — through multiple informal sources — the government’s condition for allowing the event to proceed was that Access Now moderate specific topics and exclude Taiwanese participants from both in-person and online participation. Access Now described this as a “red line” and cancelled the event on April 29 after receiving a formal postponement letter from the Ministry of Information and Media. The Zambian government’s stated rationale was the need to ensure “alignment with Zambia’s national values.” The Mulungushi Conference Center, the planned venue, had been refurbished in 2020 with approximately 60 million US dollars in Chinese government funding, which Zambian authorities at the time described as a “gift from China.” Three days before the postponement announcement, China’s Ambassador Han Jing (韓鏡) and Zambia’s Minister of Finance signed a development cooperation agreement. The planned conference had included panels on China’s export of digital authoritarianism, disinformation in Africa, and Chinese surveillance and censorship technologies. Amnesty International described the cancellation as “a brazen act of Chinese transnational repression.” Article 19’s Michael Caster argued that the incident was “emblematic of China’s broader efforts to influence global digital norms-setting” through a state-centric model of cyber sovereignty. Human Rights Watch senior Africa researcher Idriss Ali Nassah said the Zambian government’s stated reasons were “flimsy.” The Net Rights Coalition and more than 130 digital rights stakeholders condemned the cancellation, citing concerns about civic space ahead of Zambia’s August 2026 elections. NYU’s Stern Center for Business and Human Rights noted the broader context of Chinese surveillance technology investment across Africa as a source of leverage in such incidents. Among the planned participants for RightsCon was Lingua Sinica project coordinator Dalia Parete, who was due to speak on global PRC media engagements and interference.