wilful exclusion???

yes, certainly. if after being in the region for four years, one just does not know the language, s/he deserves to be excluded.
after many conferences, meetings that address only the Arab media, leaving the English out just as one would treat furniture or flower pots, i have vowed to learn the language... but have not moved my little finger... so i deserve to be left out.
yesterday, one more conference at the soon-to-be-opened Museaum of Islamic Art, one more instance of reminding the likes of me that we were just present, but did not count...
it started right at the entry, where the security took away my ID card (for many of us, that card represents us, a number with a photograph), handed a Visitor Pass... i hung on to that piece of paper and after getting stuck in at least four different points of security check, landed at the venue, which had been shifted from where i knew it was being held...
for once, in a long long while, i felt i was on foreign soil... there were none who spoke English... every soul was Arabic speaking, so all my desperate efforts at communicating were falling on deaf ears, with a small, staccato phrase, "mafi english."
to top it all, the security who was escorting me from one wing of the huge building to the other, thought i looked like some Chinese or Japanese...
ok, i thought... may be...
but while at the Conference, it was painful to be excluded... messages were only being translated on request... but the speakers could not only speak English, they were good at it... and that was evident when a prominent TV journo insisted to speak in English since her channel is telecast in many English speaking countries.
so where do we, who represent just the local circulating press, stand? any idea???