Executive Director
Human Rights Watch
Kennith Roth, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch writes in WashPost:
Some governments around the world are using the pandemic to claim that human rights are a luxury we cannot afford. With the crisis as a pretext, they are arresting critics, intensifying surveillance and seizing broad emergency powers. The underlying assumption is clear: Safeguarding human rights is a nicety that must be jettisoned when times get tough.
In fact, though, the pandemic has also turned out to be an opportunity to promote human rights — not only as a matter of principle but also for reasons of pragmatism. The crisis has shown that officials who ignore human rights jeopardize our health, while respecting human rights is the best public health strategy.
Good health policy, for example, requires timely access to accurate information so governments can quickly respond to any threat. The early stages of the pandemic in Wuhan, China, illustrate the danger of suppressing speech about public health.
. . . .
Perhaps the ultimate threat is from governments that assume excessively broad “emergency” powers. International human rights law recognizes that certain rights — such as our right to travel or congregate during an infectious-disease outbreak — must give way in time of crisis, so long as restrictions are lawful, necessary and proportionate. Yet leaders around the world are using the pandemic to strengthen their rule, dismantle checks and balances, and escape accountability at the expense of our rights. All of these behaviors run counter to effective health-care policy and can easily backfire.
When systems of democratic accountability are in place, politicians, journalists and civic activists can push back if leaders such as Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, John Magufuli of Tanzania, or Donald Trump in the United States downplay the virus or prioritize their electoral fortunes.
[The Opinions section is looking for stories of how the coronavirus has affected people of all walks of life. Write to us.]
That pushback is precluded when leaders use the pandemic to undermine restraints on their power, such as Hungary’s Viktor Orban, Egypt’s Abdel Fatah al-Sissi, Cambodia’s Hun Sen and El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele. Their records in containing the coronavirus contrast unfavorably with such open and transparent leaders as New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern, Taiwan’s Tsai Ing-wen and Germany’s Angela Merkel.
In the end, those who treat human rights as an obstacle to public health have it backward. Respecting human rights is not only the right thing to do. It is also essential if governments are to protect the public’s health rather than their own grasp on power.
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Read the complete article at the link.
Undoubtedly, Trump, Miller, and the rest of the White Nationalists are out to destroy America by attacking human rights and using the pandemic as a justification. And, officials of DHS and DOJ who parrot this nonsense, as well as the Federal Judges who “go along to get along” with abrogation of international standards and human rights based on bogus “emergency” rationales are also guilty.
They only way to get our country and our humanity back is to vote the Trumpists out at all levels of the Government which will allow us to start appointing better Federal Judges who put the Constitution, individual rights, and human rights first.
Due Process Forever. Complicity in the Face of Tyranny, Never!
PWS
05-06-20