One also has to wonder how much local and non-local political interference was involved as well, considering most speakers were unlikely to support the 'status quo'.

> One also has to wonder how much local and non-local political interference was involved as well

Most likely very little. To clearly re-iterate the point I made above ...

    1. this is a country which requires political and government clearance for events; and
    2. they wanted to host a Human Rights conference

If there was any "interference", that would merely be icing on the cake.

With a conference topic like that, both they and their international speakers would have been enduring tons of perfectly standard bureaucracy and paperwork whilst government departments trawled through people's LinkedIns and social media ... all standard stuff, none of which would be related to "interference".

The bottom-line reality is they should have hosted it in a country that did not require clearance.