COVID worsened international human rights abuses: Amnesty report

Many governments “weaponized” the coronavirus pandemic over the past yr to additional repress residents’ rights, international rights group Amnesty International mentioned in its annual report, launched Wednesday. The report additionally says the virus disproportionately hit ethnic minorities, refugees and ladies.
“At the global level, the COVID-19 pandemic exposed and exacerbated inequalities,” Philip Luther, Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Research and Advocacy Director, informed DW.
“Cruelly, those who gave the most were often protected the least in this pandemic. The pandemic had a devastating impact on health workers,” Luther added.
In 2020, governments had been required to showcase distinctive management to mitigate the impression of the pandemic, particularly on deprived teams. Amnesty International’s new Secretary General Agnes Callamard blasted governments for failing to tackle that position. She referred to as on leaders to reset and reboot to construct a world grounded in equality, human rights, and humanity.
“We must learn from the pandemic, and come together to work boldly and creatively so everyone is on an equal footing,” she mentioned in a press launch.
The report covers 149 international locations: Here are eight examples, in accordance with Amnesty, of human rights abuses.
Egypt
Under the rule of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Egyptian authorities have carried out brutal repressions of freedom of expression, clamping down on narratives essential of the federal government.
The onset of the coronavirus pandemic noticed a brand new clampdown — reprisals towards journalists and well being employees who raised public well being issues or deviated from Egypt’s official narrative on COVID-19.

Amnesty documented the arrest of a minimum of 9 well being employees on terrorism-related costs, in addition to “spreading false news,” pending additional investigations.
“These are health workers who in Egypt expressed safety concerns and criticized the government’s handling of the pandemic and other social media platforms,” Luther mentioned.
According to Luther, the investigations are nonetheless ongoing.
“This shows, in a way, the broader reality. The authorities — within the context of the pandemic — clamped down on free speech online and offline.”
Lebanon
Over eight months after a devastating explosion on August 4, 2020, that tore via its capital Beirut, Lebanese authorities have did not ship investigation outcomes to the households of over 200 individuals who had been killed within the blast.
The official account attributed the blast to 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate saved for years on the port, however authorities failed to carry anybody accountable.
In its report, Amnesty International cited leaked official paperwork the place authorities in customs, the judiciary, the army and safety equipment warned successive governments of the harmful stockpile of chemical substances on the port a minimum of 10 occasions previously six years.

The rights advocacy group raised issues concerning the lack of independence and impartiality of the judicial council, which is tasked with investigating the blast.
“The judicial council also does not have jurisdiction to prosecute sitting or former officials, including the president and ministers,” Luther mentioned.
“That’s particularly of concern in this case, given the really serious and striking allegations that state bodies were responsible for the tragic events of August 4.”
Brazil
Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, infamous for racist remarks about indigenous individuals, has allowed the razing of the Amazon rainforest to hold on unimpeded since he took workplace in January 2019.
Under Bolsonaro, police violence escalated in the course of the pandemic. Deforestation has soared whereas the police have tightened their grip on environmental activists.

Amnesty recorded a minimum of 3,181 civilians killed by the police throughout the nation between January and June final yr – a mean of 17 deaths per day. According to the NGO Global Witness, the nation is the third most deadly on this planet for environmental and human rights activists.
In 2020, the plight of Brazil’s indigenous individuals worsened each resulting from COVID and unlawful mining, wildfires and the seizure of land, whereas authorities labored to dismantle establishments monitoring and defending these areas, in accordance with the report.
Mexico
While home and gender-based violence surged globally in the course of the pandemic, the North American nation drew an unprecedented attendance at protests on International Women’s Day in March after two grotesque killings, the report mentioned.
Amnesty cited the killing of a 25-year-old girl who was reportedly skinned and mutilated by her husband. Just a few days later in an unrelated incident, the physique of a 17-year-old woman was present in a plastic bag.

“While we are not criticizing lockdowns in and of themselves, many women were denied increased barriers of protection and support during that period,” Luther informed DW.
In 2020, over 3,700 killings of girls had been reported. More than 900 of these had been investigated as femicides, in accordance with Amnesty.
“Violence against women is an epidemic of global proportions. And it is governments’ failures to prioritize measures to combat violence that enabled this to happen,” Luther added.
Bulgaria
In its common overview, Amnesty referred to as on governments to take pressing motion to realize gender justice and defend members of the LGBT+ neighborhood from backlash.
The report particularly talked about a homophobic assault in Bulgaria — the place over 70% of LGBT+ individuals really feel compelled to cover their sexual orientation, in accordance with a survey carried out by the EU Fundamental Rights Agency.
Football followers reportedly wished to “cleanse” town of Plovdiv of the LGBT+ neighborhood and attacked youngsters, injuring a few of them.
Plovdiv launched a legal investigation into the assault, which was ongoing until the top of the yr.
Denmark
The Scandinavian nation’s discriminatory housing legal guidelines as soon as once more got here underneath the highlight within the report, which additionally made point out of an increase in each verbal and bodily abuse focusing on minorities throughout a COVID lockdown from March to June final yr.
Amnesty raised issues {that a} controversial 2018 regulation on social housing continued to be in full impact.

The regulation labels neighborhoods comprising greater than 50% of “non-Westerners” as “ghettos” and topics residents and guests to double the legal penalties for sure offenses.
While Amnesty made no point out of the Danish authorities’s plans to reform the laws, activists lately warned that the proposed reforms would slash the share of individuals of “non-Western” origins in social housing all the way down to 30%.
Myanmar
At least 550 civilians have been killed in Myanmar because the army coup on February 1, the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners studies.
But even earlier than the army overthrew the elected authorities led by Aung San Suu Kyi, armed battle had escalated within the nation. Amnesty warned of “serious human rights violations,” together with torture and different ill-treatment of civilian detainees by the hands of presidency forces focusing on minorities.

Indiscriminate airstrikes killed and injured civilians all year long, notably placing youngsters in danger.
Last February, on Children’s Day, an artillery shell landed on a main college within the Rakhine State, injuring a minimum of 17 college students.
The army endangered the lives of civilians by occupying faculties and changing them to non permanent bases, probably turning all faculties into targets, Amnesty wrote.
Kenya
The Kenyan police’s extreme use of pressure took heart stage within the sub-Saharan nation’s violations of rights, as monitored by the worldwide group.
In January, the police fired rounds of reside ammunition at peaceable demonstrators in Nairobi, who had been protesting the dire state of roads of their neighborhood, and killed a 17-year-old boy.
The police additionally enforced COVID curfews with deadly pressure, killing a minimum of six individuals in simply 10 days, Amnesty wrote.