The human rights organization Amnesty International warns that the corona pandemic is endangering free speech and independent reporting.
“In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, governments have banned independent reporting and attacked people who criticized their government’s response to the spread of the coronavirus or questioned its measures,” the organization said on Tuesday.
One consequence of this is that many people do not have access to information about the corona virus and therefore do not know how to protect themselves and those around them.
A particularly frightening example is therefore China. As early as December 2019, members of the medical staff and citizen journalists tried to draw attention to the outbreak of the then unknown disease Covid-19 in Wuhan, as Amnesty International announced. For this they were persecuted by the government. By February 2020, according to Amnesty, 5511 people who had published information about the Covid-19 outbreak had been investigated for “manufacturing and deliberately disseminating false and harmful information”.
But other countries are also being criticized: The government of Tanzania has introduced a number of laws in recent years to silence journalists, human rights activists and members of the political opposition. In Nicaragua, authorities tried to downplay the effects of the pandemic and intimidate those who raised concerns. Then in the wake of the pandemic, a “special law on Internet crime” was introduced, with which government critics would be punished. Russia has expanded the existing false news law.
The Amnesty report also highlights the role of social media in the rapid spread of misinformation about COVID-19 and criticizes the fact that the operating companies are not exercising sufficient care to prevent the spread of false and misleading information. “The vast amount of misinformation poses a serious threat to health – regardless of whether it comes from social media or from people in a position of power who want to divide society and create confusion for their own benefit,” said Annemarie, Managing Director of Amnesty International Austria Slag clearly.