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Several African governments are using the Covid-19 pandemic as an excuse to crack down on the right to free speech and peaceful protests, Human Rights Watch said in a report released Thursday.
“Governments should counter Covid-19 by encouraging people to hide, not shut up,” said Gerry Simpson of HRW.
Governments are targeting journalists, activists, healthcare workers and political opposition groups who criticize the response to the pandemic, the New York-based rights watchdog said.
Covid-19 is being used to justify attacks on critics, as well as detentions or sometimes killings of those who disagree with their handling of the health crisis.
Stop peaceful protests
The virus has also been used as a pretext to break up protests, shut down the media, and pass vague laws that criminalize free speech.
In Uganda, security forces arrested opposition figurehead Bobi Wine in November for allegedly violating Covid-19 restrictions.
At least 16 people were killed in subsequent protests, police said as authorities cracked down on opposition protests – HRW said 54 people lost their lives.
The regional elections in Cameroon were the subject of opposition protests in September, partly over concerns over the holding of elections despite the crisis in the English-speaking regions of the country.
The government decided to ban all public meetings and demonstrations, citing the danger of the spread of Covid-19, but bars, restaurants, schools and places of worship have all remained open.
Algeria banned protests in March 2020, with the government saying it was in the interest of saving people’s lives.
This effectively muzzled a wave of mass protests that had continued to push for change after forcing the resignation of former veteran leader Abdelaziz Bouteflika.
Silencing the critics
A journalist was beaten up in Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi, by several police officers in January this year, when he asked for permission to photograph them carrying out Covid-19 measures.
The Committee to Protect Journalists said the Malawian journalist saw police beating people up for not wearing face masks and wanted to record the incident.
Zambian authorities withdrew the license from Prime TV station last April, offering vague reasons to remove the channel, although the outlet is known to have criticized the government and covered Lusaka’s response to the coronavirus crisis .
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed implemented a six-month state of emergency in April last year, amid Covid-19 restrictions.
The measures cracked down on media reporting and included vague and undefined language, HRW said.
Egyptian authorities have arrested people for criticizing the government’s response to the novel coronavirus, jailing at least nine medical professionals last year for spreading false information.
Egypt also expelled a foreign journalist, revoking his accreditation in March for a report on the true extent of the epidemic, as Covid-19 began to take hold of countries around the world.
‘Respect human rights’
“Beating, detaining, prosecuting and censoring peaceful critics violates many basic rights, including freedom of speech, while doing nothing to stop the pandemic,” said Simpson, deputy director of crises and conflicts at HRW.
HRW said at least 83 governments around the world have used Covid-19 as a ground for violating free speech rights. The human rights watchdog calls on the UN Human Rights Council to investigate states and whether they are respecting human rights in their response to the pandemic.
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