Covid-19,
The Killer of Bodily and Sociopolitical Goodness
Pratheek V.
Tangirala
©
Copyright 2023 by Pratheek V. Tangirala
|
Photo by Martin
Sanchez on Unsplash |
“..[As
of February 1st, 2021,] the state of emergency is declared in
accordance with Article 417 of the 2008 Constitution…
governance and jurisdiction is handed over to the Commander-in-Chief
in accordance with the 2008 Constitution Article 418.”
—
General
Min Aung
Hlang, Prime Minister, Chairman of the State Administration Council
of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar
The
world has progressed immeasurably for the better of the condition of
citizens. Far from the days of 1300s feudalism and the darkness of
right and left-wing dictatorships in the mid-20th century, more
people have lived in prosperity and liberty since the 1990s than at
any point in history. This potential, however, is fast crumbling.
COVID-19 has and continues to punish our progress to improve human
rights by restricting the movement of common people and has led to
world leaders abusing their power in novel ways. Although countries
such as Brazil have re-elected respectable defenders of human rights,
diversity, and the environment back to power even while in the
pandemic, countless others have canceled democracy and willingly
crumbled human rights due to the potential provided by COVID-19’s
social restrictiveness across the East and West hemispheres.
Asia:
The
largest country in the world, and arguably the most powerful human
rights abuser now, is China. Since 2017, China has detained some two
million ethnic Turkic Muslims, most of the Uighurs, from the far
western region of Xinjiang, in expansive internment camps that
practice forced labor, torture, and birth control in addition to
rigorous Sinicization and extreme censorship of activities and
speech. The speaking and writing of the Uyghur language is strongly
discouraged, and detainees are banned from leaving and forced to
claim appreciation for the Party for providing them the opportunity
to come to the camps. It’s not just the government, but even
private corporations such as Huawei Technologies, the world’s
largest telecommunications company, have been developing facial
recognition to distinguish between Han and Uyghur Chinese, in
addition to “hidden terrorist inclinations” within
Uyghurs. While the official narrative for all
of these
malicious actions is “countering violent terrorism and
separatism” while promoting “the pursuit of a
better life by people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang,”
the bitter reality is that the Communist Party is promoting an active
genocide to homogenize China and eliminate any threats to Beijing’s
absolutism as proven by hundreds of testimonies by escaped prisoners,
one such victim who states that Communist policemen “hung
[Uighurs] up and beat [them] on the thigh, on the hips with wooden
torches, with iron whips.” Not limited to the Xinjiang
Autonomous Region, China is no stranger to infringing on the
sovereignty of other parts of its own land such as the islands of
Hong Kong, where they’ve attempted to introduce a bill that’d
allow China to extradite those who broke mainland Chinese laws, some
of the most restrictive and totalitarian in the world, from Hong
Kong, a free democracy. This has sparked protests from March 2019
which resurged after May 2020 when China introduced a new national
security bill to allow Beijing to “take over prosecution in
cases which are considered "very serious", while some
trials will be heard behind closed doors.” This act was
specifically drafted and passed now and not later since it’s
harder for people to unite and advocate when the fear of an
infectious disease outside is ingrained in their everyday minds.
“Some'' and “serious” is about as far descriptors
go, and this directly infringes upon the “One Country, Two
Systems'' pledge that China gave to the United Kingdom when
colonialism ended in 1997 where the Hong Kong judiciary and
legislature would be entirely separate from the communist mainland,
and fundamental freedoms such as press, religion (China practices
state atheism and routinely persecutes religious groups such as
Christians and Muslims in addition to LGBTQ+ persons), and protest
would be protected until 2047. With fifteen protesters murdered,
nearly 3,000 injuries, and over ten thousands protesters arrested,
China has entirely broken its own Basic Law of Hong Kong
Special
Administrative Region Governance. With regards to China’s
neighbors like the Republic of China, consisting of Taiwan and other
nearby islands, the Chinese Communist Party has sought to usurp power
over it since the 1940s since the existence of a parallel, opponent
government, one that claims all of China to itself, proves that the
party was never able to totally assert its dominance. However, since
2021, the People’s Liberation Air Force has flown ever-more
planes into Taiwanese airspace, China’s diplomats have
condemned Taiwan’s independence in harsher terms, and has made
open their plans to “reintegrate any and all separatist
areas and take all courses of actions necessary to unify the Chinese
nation.”
Just
south of Tibet is the Buddhist, thickly forested former British
colony of Myanmar. Once suffering under a brutal military junta that
controlled all aspects of life for nearly five decades starting 1962,
Myanmar finally accepted democracy and freedom in 2011. This way of
life for the Burmese had continued well, but in February 2021, the
Commander-in-Chief of the military, a general who barely hinted
disdain with the governmental status quo after the November 2020
general elections, took to rallying his army behind him, declaring
the three-month old election results null and void, and sentenced all
of the democratically-elected heads of state to prison for decades on
sham charges. The military has gotten back to its old ways of
crushing dissent by banning free speech and protest and routinely
executing dissidents. Over 3,000 protesters, including minors, have
been killed, 14,000 are jailed, and over a million are internally
displaced.
As
most of the world is currently watching the FIFA World Cup and
happily cheering on their national team, few people know the methods
the oil-rich monarchy of Qatar utilized for the construction of their
stadiums. The state spent approximately $220 billion (the claimed
government figure is $8 billion), dwarfing the combined cost of seven
previous tournaments. Apart from the countless allegations of bribery
in the bidding process for the 2010 host selection, Qatar was known
to practice the kafala system, where migrant workers (the vast
majority of whom were sourced from the impoverished rural lands of
the Indian Subcontinent) had the passports seized, were forced to pay
thousands of dollars in immigration fees through taking out nearly
unpayable loans, and were paid less than $7 a day, much of this money
simply going back to their loans. Moreover, employers had absolute
control over whether or not migrants could leave their job, which
often involved outdoor physical labor at 120oF
conditions.
Housing was cramped and squalid, and food was limited and unsanitary.
All of these led to 6,500 deaths due to exhaustion, disease, and even
suicide. Qatar, like many of its Arab neighbors, has few rights for
LGBTQ+ persons. Same-sex marriages are legally unrecognized, acts of
homosexuality can lead to years of imprisonment and heavy fines, and
LGBTQ+ support is unofficially but strongly discouraged.
Africa:
Africa,
a continent no stranger to centuries of exploitation, occupation, and
totalitarianism, has had a resurgence of military juntas since 2021,
all of which have taken advantage of the instability and fear caused
by COVID-19 to usurp power. Five countries, namely Mali, Burkina
Faso, Guinea, Sudan, and Chad, continue to suffer under the National
Committee for the Salvation of the People, Patriotic
Movement
for Safeguard and Restoration, National Committee of Reconciliation
and Development, Sovereignty Council, and
Transitional
Military Council, respectively. In Burkina Faso, two coup
d’etats
have taken place within eight months, one against the
internationally-recognized government, and another one internally
within the junta. No heads of state other than the junta leader
himself are known to the public who had no say in the military
takeover of their democracy. With this anonymity, Burkinabes are
scared of living under an utterly unknown government where only
soldiers are politicians. In Mali, a Ministry of Justice building was
set ablaze, fifteen people were injured in an army shootout with four
additional deaths, and while the junta promised to draft and enact a
new constitution as well as end military rule by January 2021, no
governmental reforms have been made since August 2020. In Guinea,
while the September 2021 junta promised to only rule until March 2023
upon taking control, there’s no evidence to assert that they’ll
leave office then as no preparations have been made since, a
protester death has taken place, and multiple prisoners of conscience
have been named. In October 2021, Sudan underwent a coup d’etat
that interrupted their transition to democracy after three decades of
Islamist, genocidal military rule. Massive protests arose, and while
more than sixty deaths and nearly 150 injuries have occurred, they’ve
sadly failed as the armed forces still dominate the central
government and routinely jail anyone deemed an opponent. In Central
Africa, Chad declared a military junta on April 20th 2021, suspended
almost all other political parties, and killed 100 separatists and
over sixty protesters due to the murder of its long-time president by
Front for Change and Concord in Chad Libya-backed
separatists
in the northwestern Tibesti region. However, there seems to be some
positive change arriving as the late president’s son has since
regained power and promised fair leadership elections for common
citizens between the FACT separatists responsible
for the
killing and the federal government later this year.
Eastern
Europe:
Undoubtedly,
the key geopolitical event of the year 2022 was the Russian
Federation’s invasion of the Ukraine, and little needs to be
said about the Russian military’s brutality and
destructiveness. Ukraine, especially the Eastern regions of Donetsk
and Luhansk, has been engulfed by constant warfare that has resulted
in around 150,000 deaths on both sides. Some 30% of all Ukrainians
are currently displaced, of which three million have crossed the
border into neighboring Romania and Poland. Entire cities such as
Mariupol and Bakhmut have been almost completely destroyed, and
deliberate massacres of hundreds civilians have taken place in Bucha,
Izium, and countless other towns. The entire world, other than
certain Russian allies which are themselves authoritarian, has
condemned the invasion as a most egregious breach of sovereignty and
human rights. President Putin’s defense? That "Ukraine
never had a tradition of genuine statehood” and that a
country with a Jewish president was in need of “de-Nazificiation”
through “special Russian peacekeepers.” Ukrainians
want liberty and autonomy, and no country deserves to be occupied by
a foreign power against its will and have its people slaughtered by
the hundreds of thousands in the process of forced neocolonialism.
Like
its number one ally, Europe’s last nation with
actively-practiced capital punishment, Belarus, has quashed the
democracy protests led by the Coordination Council for the
Transfer of Power which seeks to end President Alexander
Lukashenko’s six-term, 28 year-long tyrannic regime, the only
regime the country has ever seen since its new constitution was
drafted after independence from the communist Soviet Union.
Statistics include that ten protesters are dead, 50,000 are arrested,
and six are missing; a thousand cases of alleged extrajudicial
torture have been reported, and over 1,500 injuries, including
children, have taken place on both sides. Despite the 750,000
protesters who’ve fought to have dictator Lukashenko resign and
the fact that around ~65% of Belarusians are believed to have voted
against him, the president was sworn in again and made new laws
stating that protests must have legal approval beforehand and no
journalists or reporting be present onsite to take place. He even
told the public that they “would have to kill him to get
another election” and made his entire cabinet resign to
consolidate power into himself. As of mid-2021, the protests had
unfortunately failed, and there are no signs of Lukashenko stopping
the increase of consolidation of power, let alone conceding.
These
types of anti-democratic actions, even if more benign, aren’t
limited to Russian allies; they can even penetrate the European
Union, regarded by the world as the premier bastion of liberty and
freedom. One such world leader who stands affront to his alliance’s
values is Hungary’s President Viktor Orban, who unashamedly
boasts that his ideal Hungary is an “illiberal Christian
democracy,” (quite an oxymoron, because how can a
government allow the people’s choice but be anti-freedom?)19
and that Hungarians “are not a mixed race and do not want to
become a mixed race,” unwanting of migrants who he calls
every single one a “poison[ous]... biological and terror
risk.” When passing a bill that
banned
transgenders from changing their birth sex on official documentation,
his party literally claimed that “the opinion of those
[LGBTQ+] affected plays no role” in legal decision making.
He is an opponent of multiculturalism, immigration, and secularism as
well as a vicious critic of the EU who made his country drop almost
seventy places down on the Reporters Sans Frontières NGO’s
Press Freedom Index. And still, for Orban, this oppression is still
not enough. At the start of COVID-19, he gave himself emergency
powers that the Hungarian Constitution allows a president to keep for
an unlimited time until the said crisis ends completely. Of course,
the crisis end date is at the president’s absolute pleasure.
End:
Overall,
through these aggressions and hundreds of smaller examples in other
nations, it is evident that respect for human rights is surely
crumbling to an extent that wouldn’t have happened were it not
for COVID-19. From banning print newspapers because they may carry
diseases to banning public demonstrations in the name of social
distancing, COVID-19 has literally paved the way for authoritarians
to expand or manifest their oppression. The pandemic brings fears for
health and leaving home, which in turn creates distrust and ruins the
economy. Less happiness, less employment, and less wellbeing loom
large; these are exact social factors needed to pursue twisted
political goals. However, neither us in America nor the people
suffering can stay silent. We need to campaign national
representatives, whether they be envoys, embassies, or judiciaries,
to end these human rights violations and create a more just, liberal
world. Dictators don’t deserve to lead in the 21st century, and
we as a peace-loving and respectful world need to affirm that Stalin,
Hitler, Pinochet, Amin, Saddam, Duvalier, Mobutu, and Kim are but
relics of lamentable mistakes to learn from and never repeat.
I’m
Pratheek Tangirala, a 16 year-old high school student from Chantilly
High School in Fairfax County, Virginia. I have not received any form
of income for my work this past year other than a $25 cash prize in a
high school writing contest (different essay), and nothing I’ve
written has been openly published in print or on the Internet
(journal/website) in this past year.
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