Is COVID-19 killing human rights, protections, too?
One of the more insidious side effects of the COVID-19 pandemic has been the bending — in the wrong direction — of the international political rights curve.
In fact, the novel coronavirus has provided repressive governments (and even democratic ones) around the world with an irresistible opportunity to abuse their own people.
Indeed, it is not particularly difficult in times of exceptional crisis to pass emergency powers.
It is often more challenging, however, to dismantle them after the fact.
For instance, the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu has moved, in the name of COVID-19, to close down the country’s courts for most cases and attempted to prevent the new opposition from ousting the speaker of the Knesset. It has also utilized sophisticated technology and cellphone data to engage in invasive surveillance of its citizens.
Using the deadly pandemic as a cover, political leaders in Europe, Latin America, Asia and Africa have also moved recently to crush dissent in the public square, close their borders to migrants and to silence critical voices.
All of these flagrant rights violations can now, in effect, be justified as necessary — or at least tolerable — given the ongoing war against the lifethreatening virus. Some commentators have even started to refer to these troubling illiberal actions as veritable
“coronavirus coups.”
Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, has invoked the lethal pathogen to fortify his already oligarchic and authoritarian regime. He is effectively ruling by decree indefinitely (and eroding parliamentary institutions) and investing himself with the power to go after independent journalists, to threaten minority communities and to jail those who are accused of publishing “false” information.
In the Americas Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, known as someone who already harbours anti-democratic impulses, has taken full advantage of the situation. While dismissing the virus as “just a little flu or the sniffles,” he has sought to discredit the media (and to thwart freedom of information requests) and to embolden his populist supporters.
Similarly, Venezuela has used the COVID-19 outbreak, and the imposition of a widespread quarantine, to crack down on political opponents, anti-government protests and public criticism. In Chile, which has been battling a determined opposition movement for months, the government has sent the feared military into the city squares to intimidate democracy protectors.
Under the guise of the coronavirus pandemic, Beijing has sought to further consolidate power and the grip of the Chinese Communist Party. It has ruthlessly silenced critics of its COVID-19 response, expelled journalists (and increased censorship) and significantly enhanced the reach of China’s surveillance state.
Governments in Thailand, Myanmar and Indonesia are also targeting their critics and cracking down on alleged rabble-rousers. Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, has dangerously singled out the country’s minority Muslim communities as the source of the coronavirus outbreak in the country.
Furthermore, mercurial President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines has arrogated to himself extraordinary emergency powers to do as he wishes.
As the Concerned Lawyers for Civil Liberties in the Philippines noted: “This limitless grant of emergency powers is tantamount to autocracy.” No one will be surprised if he uses this enhanced executive authority to go after media critics, human rights groups or political opponents who all disapprove of his harsh tactics to rid the country of drugdealers.
In addition, countries in Africa have imposed unprecedented and dangerous emergency regulations, including Zimbabwe’s 20-year prison sentence for anyone who disseminates “false news” about the national lockdown.
In Nigeria, hundreds of people with mental illness have been routinely detained and thrown in jail — and deprived of basic soap and water.
Canada, for its part, has chosen this time of crisis to lift the current restrictions on new export licenses for sophisticated LAV military vehicles to perennial rightsabuser Saudi Arabia.
With Canadians understandably preoccupied with a dangerous public health threat, the Trudeau government was hoping that Canadians wouldn’t notice our legitimation of a repugnant Middle East state.
No one is disputing that we are living in extraordinary and trying times. It is equally true that international human rights declarations and covenants allow for highly restrictive measures in periods of national emergency.
But they need to be proportionate and seen as necessary (and certainly not driven by political motivations).
More ominously, very little of this authoritarian action has anything to do with combatting the spread of the respiratory disease. It’s all about governments shrinking the democratic space and tightening their grip on political power. And we should not assume that these dictatorial measures will be quickly rescinded in a post-COVID-19 world.
The novel coronavirus pandemic is certainly a stark reminder of just how interdependent the world is — along with its susceptibility to border-defying diseases.
But it also carries a powerful message about the fragility of human rights protections and the reason why citizens need to constantly guard against governmental power grabs and creeping authoritarianism.
Peter McKenna is professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island.