Civil liberties threatened by COVID-19

“The right to protest, individual expression and open civic spaces are endangered when the public dialogue is awash with fear-mongering and hysteria.” 

A new study shows that 87% of the world’s population are living in countries that actively suppress civil liberties. During the COVID-19 pandemic the number of people living these conditions has increased by 4%, according to The Guardian, pointing to the fact that the virus has been used as a precedent for eroding civil liberties. 

The Civicus Monitor report proves what many civil libertarians have suspected since March; that dissent, the right to protest, individual expression and open civic spaces are endangered by opportunistic governments when the public dialogue is awash with fear-mongering and hysteria. 

The Guardian’s report notes that countries such as Hungary, Poland, Saudi Arabia and China are some of the worst places to capitalise on mass panic and widespread fear in order to expand the reach of government and clamp down on human rights. 

Guardian journalist Kate Hodal writes: ‘By using methods such as detention of protesters, excessive use of force, censorship, attacks on journalists, and harassment and intimidation of human rights defenders, many governments have used COVID-19 to “introduce or implement additional restrictions on civic freedoms”, the report said.’

The US is mentioned as one country that has been downgraded in its civil liberties score, citing the alleged clampdown on Black Lives Matter protesters by the Trump Administration and the targeting of journalists reporting on protests across the country. What this customary attack on the ‘bad orange man’ distracts from, however, is the civil rights issue here in the UK. 

No mention is made of the recent arbitrary arrests in Hyde Park, Parliament Square and Trafalgar Square; the targeting of vulnerable and elderly people by the Territorial Police at peaceful demonstrations; the use of £10,000 fines to suppress protest; the fines given to normal citizens who have been made criminals for simply trying to put food on the table; the censoring of dissent on lockdowns and vaccines by the liberal corporations in Silicon Valley, and the relentless pernicious calumnies thrown at anyone who has dared to push back at the relentless campaign of terror unleashed on the British people since March. 

The Guardian’s reporting of this important new study only cites ‘far-right’ or reactionary governments as being culprits in this global contraction of civil liberties. What it does not mention is that lockdowns and emergency powers have been the veritable cause celebre of the liberal left in 2020, with the only criticism directed at our government taking the form of pleas for tougher and more repressive restrictions. 

The left seems to be waking up to the multifarious ways that governments have jumped on COVID-19 to enact chilling attacks on civic freedoms and this is welcome, if a little late in the day. What is sinister, however, is its selective anxiety on the subject. By reporting this terrifying trend from the distance of comfortable abstractions about ‘human rights abuses’ that chime well with its SEO strategy, The Guardian and its left wing readership have conveniently avoided the real story – namely that we in Britain live in a less open, less free and less tolerant society as a result of the enforced panic in response to COVID-19, and we have the grandstanding fanatics of our cultural leaders to thank for it.