Beautiful Virgin Islands

Tuesday, Jul 22, 2025

The coronavirus pandemic threatens a crisis for human rights too

The coronavirus pandemic threatens a crisis for human rights too

People could soon be arrested for a sweeping range of new offences in the UK, says Guardian columnist Afua Hirsch
You can learn a lot about someone’s perspective from what they find reassuring at a time like this. This week I saw a private briefing from a bank, soothingly reassuring its clients that “this feels more like 9/11 than 2008”. I think the point was to let investors know that this crisis is not systemic. It felt a bit like updating the old wartime spirit for today’s hyper-capitalist economy: “Keep well-capitalised, and carry on.”

I can think of a host of reasons why 9/11 does not bring calming thoughts to mind, but one is the long-term impact it had on human rights. Back then I was in the early stages of becoming a human rights lawyer. My very first day in court was with the team defending a victim of extraordinary rendition, where Britain had helped facilitate his torture. By the time I was practising, the 7 July London bombings had happened, and so had draconian new laws – 90-day detention without trial, plus sweeping surveillance and monitoring. Many Muslims remember this as the time that racial profiling and state harassment – in airports, on the tube, in the street – became the new normal.

This might sound like a strange issue to raise when the national priority is – understandably – how to stop the spread of coronavirus, treat the sick and tackle the hit to the economy. But since last month, when the government drafted emergency regulations to grant police new powers – and more far-reaching laws are expected this week – the potential has been building for a clash between liberty, privacy and public health measures. The authorities now have the power to arrest and detain someone they believe is infectious for up to 14 days, to move that person around from custody facilities including secure hospitals, and to take blood or saliva from them by force, even if they are a child.

The legislation set to come before parliament is likely to ban public gatherings, to widen police and immigration officer powers of detention and restraint, to give doctors powers to sign death certificates without seeing the deceased person’s body, to allow fast-tracked burial and cremation, and to strip back services in care homes. People who refuse to self-isolate could be made to do so using the always contested “reasonable force”.

Our human rights protections – long maligned by many of the politicians now running our pandemic-stricken nation – were designed for moments such as this. They contain specific exemptions for situations in which the state needs to contain the spread of infectious disease. And the continuing shutdown caused by coronavirus doesn’t make them less relevant, it makes them more important than ever.

The proposed measures will contain safeguards – as they are constitutionally required to do so – especially rights to appeal. But this being a government that has decimated legal aid, brought our court system to its knees and repeatedly attacked the judiciary, a key element of trust is already compromised.

Trust is one of those ingredients in a democratic process that is hard to notice until it is gone. But this government’s cavalier approach to applying the rule of law at the best of times – let’s remember the prime minister misled the Queen and illegally prorogued parliament – does not inspire confidence at a time of crisis.

Lawyers who focus on the right to human dignity in the care of vulnerable or elderly people were appalled to hear Boris Johnson suggest that the deaths of vast numbers of British people would be an acceptable price to pay for so-called “herd immunity”. One QC compared the idea to Germany’s post-9/11 attempt to permit hijacked passenger planes to be shot down, as if the lives of those on board were expendable. Similarly, he suggests, the very idea of herd immunity would have “subordinated human dignity by treating it as a quantifiable entity that can be measured and weighed in the balance.”

There’s the potential for a kind of tyranny of the majority – one of the reasons we need human rights in the first place – and then there are the new, established but upgraded, tyrannies of the state. China has developed an app of remarkably intrusive proportions, using facial recognition to track both your movements and those of everyone in your proximity, so that they can be tested in the event you become infectious.

Israel is ditching superfluous apps altogether and simply allowing security services to hack infected people’s phones to monitor their movements.

Donald Trump has insisted on a project of deliberate racial demonisation by calling Covid-19 the “Chinese virus” – inflaming what we already know to be harmful prejudice against east Asian people, including those who have suffered shameful abuse in Britain. In one of the most surreal responses to the pandemic, commentators who are usually allergic to this form of social justice have belatedly discovered the concept of reparations – not for the genocidal abuses committed by Europeans over the centuries, but for Europeans from the allegedly guilty Chinese.

The truth is that China has been remarkably effective at stemming the spread of Covid-19, but has done so through a heady concoction of human rights abuses and authoritarian rule, of which no one should be envious. Human Rights Watch has reported censorship; dissenters put “under quarantine”; a disabled child left to die when his parent was forced into isolation; and a leukaemia sufferer turned away from hospital.

That doesn’t justify racism against Chinese people any more than the British should be stigmatised for the uniquely dodgy leadership we currently endure. This pandemic has exposed what many of us said about the Tories’ long boast of “record high” numbers of people in employment – namely, insecure workers with no rights and no safety net. Likewise, we warned about starving the NHS so that its resilience is shot, creating a generation of renters with no savings, and allowing homelessness and destitution to mushroom.

These casualties had already become the new normal. But once we see newly troubling scenes – people arrested for resisting isolation or treatment – we will be reminded why this could become a crisis of rights, as much as it is one of disease.
Newsletter

Related Articles

Beautiful Virgin Islands
0:00
0:00
Close
US Treasury Secretary Calls for Institutional Review of Federal Reserve Amid AI‑Driven Growth Expectations
UK Government Considers Dropping Demand for Apple Encryption Backdoor
Severe Flooding in South Korea Claims Lives Amid Ongoing Rescue Operations
Japanese Man Discovers Family Connection Through DNA Testing After Decades of Separation
Russia Signals Openness to Ukraine Peace Talks Amid Escalating Drone Warfare
Switzerland Implements Ban on Mammography Screening
Japanese Prime Minister Vows to Stay After Coalition Loses Upper House Majority
Pogacar Extends Dominance with Stage Fifteen Triumph at Tour de France
CEO Resigns Amid Controversy Over Relationship with HR Executive
Man Dies After Being Pulled Into MRI Machine Due to Metal Chain in New York Clinic
NVIDIA Achieves $4 Trillion Valuation Amid AI Demand
US Revokes Visas of Brazilian Corrupted Judges Amid Fake Bolsonaro Investigation
U.S. Congress Approves Rescissions Act Cutting Federal Funding for NPR and PBS
North Korea Restricts Foreign Tourist Access to New Seaside Resort
Brazil's Supreme Court Imposes Radical Restrictions on Former President Bolsonaro
Centrist Criticism of von der Leyen Resurfaces as she Survives EU Confidence Vote
Judge Criticizes DOJ Over Secrecy in Dropping Charges Against Gang Leader
Apple Closes $16.5 Billion Tax Dispute With Ireland
Von der Leyen Faces Setback Over €2 Trillion EU Budget Proposal
UK and Germany Collaborate on Global Military Equipment Sales
Trump Plans Over 10% Tariffs on African and Caribbean Nations
Flying Taxi CEO Reclaims Billionaire Status After Stock Surge
Epstein Files Deepen Republican Party Divide
Zuckerberg Faces $8 Billion Privacy Lawsuit From Meta Shareholders
FIFA Pressured to Rethink World Cup Calendar Due to Climate Change
SpaceX Nears $400 Billion Valuation With New Share Sale
Microsoft, US Lab to Use AI for Faster Nuclear Plant Licensing
Trump Walks Back Talk of Firing Fed Chair Jerome Powell
Zelensky Reshuffles Cabinet to Win Support at Home and in Washington
"Can You Hit Moscow?" Trump Asked Zelensky To Make Putin "Feel The Pain"
Irish Tech Worker Detained 100 days by US Authorities for Overstaying Visa
Dimon Warns on Fed Independence as Trump Administration Eyes Powell’s Succession
Church of England Removes 1991 Sexuality Guidelines from Clergy Selection
Superman Franchise Achieves Success with Latest Release
Hungary's Viktor Orban Rejects Agreements on Illegal Migration
Jeff Bezos Considers Purchasing Condé Nast as a Wedding Gift
Ghislaine Maxwell Says She’s Ready to Testify Before Congress on Epstein’s Criminal Empire
Bal des Pompiers: A Celebration of Community and Firefighter Culture in France
FBI Chief Kash Patel Denies Resignation Speculations Amid Epstein List Controversy
Air India Pilot’s Mental Health Records Under Scrutiny
Google Secures Windsurf AI Coding Team in $2.4 Billion Licence Deal
Jamie Dimon Warns Europe Is Losing Global Competitiveness and Flags Market Complacency
South African Police Minister Suspended Amid Organised Crime Allegations
Nvidia CEO Claims Chinese Military Reluctance to Use US AI Technology
Hong Kong Advances Digital Asset Strategy to Address Economic Challenges
Australia Rules Out Pre‑commitment of Troops, Reinforces Defence Posture Amid US‑China Tensions
Martha Wells Says Humanity Still Far from True Artificial Intelligence
Nvidia Becomes World’s First Four‑Trillion‑Dollar Company Amid AI Boom
U.S. Resumes Deportations to Third Countries After Supreme Court Ruling
Excavation Begins at Site of Mass Grave for Children at Former Irish Institution
×