Dokumentation von Human Rights Watch, 14.2.2021 (engl. Originalfassung)
Since January 2020, at least 83 governments have used the Covid-19 pandemic as an opportunity to silence critics and adopt new repressive laws criminalizing speech. They have committed thousands of abuses in five key areas:
- Security forces or state officials physically assaulted journalists or bloggers reporting on Covid-19 policies, as well as protesters, opposition activists and lawyers.
- Governments have used Covid-19 and pre-Covid-19 laws and measures to arbitrarily arrest, detain, prosecute, and fine or imprison critics of government responses to the emergency, or have used them to target critics of policies unrelated to the pandemic.
- Governments have used multiple tools to censor media and social media coverage of the pandemic. These include adopting laws and other measures that criminalize spreading misinformation on public health or other topics the government deems off-limits; using new and pre-pandemic measures to threaten critics with prosecution; blocking Covid-19-related media reports; and shutting down media outlets for their Covid-19 reporting. Authorities have also investigated, threatened, and dismissed healthcare staff for speaking publicly about the authorities’ response to the pandemic.
- Governments have suspended or restricted the right to request and receive public health information or limited press accreditation for Covid-19-related press briefings to pro-state media outlets.
- Authorities have arbitrarily banned or broken up Covid-19-related protests or used social distancing measures to end other protests critical of government policies unrelated to the coronavirus.
Die vollständige Dokumentation finden Sie hier.