Power-hungry leaders are treating the pandemic as an opportunity to lock-up critics, stifle opposition and increase citizen surveillance
, during a discussion about when and how America should ease covid-19 lockdowns, Donald Trump claimed to have “absolute power” to decide, overriding state governors. Within a day, he was forced to retreat. No serious legal scholar agreed with him—America’s constitution is admirably clear on the limits to presidential authority.
Unscrupulous politicians have seen opportunity in disaster before. Vladimir Putin grabbed extra powers after a school siege involving terrorists in Beslan, a town near Russia’s border with Georgia. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan imposed a state of emergency after a failed coup in 2016, and has since ruled like a sultan. This pandemic presents an even greater opportunity for mischief, because it is raging everywhere at once. The world’s attention is on the virus.
Social-distancing rules can be applied selectively. Azerbaijan’s president says the “isolation” of members of the opposition may “become a historical necessity”. Several have been locked up for supposedly violating a lockdown. Unpopular minorities are also at risk. In Uganda police raided a shelter housing 20 gay and transgender people and later charged them with “congesting in a school-like-dormitory setting within a small house”.
In Turkey at least eight journalists have been arrested on charges of “spreading misinformation”. Hundreds of others have been investigated for critical posts on social media. In Bolivia the interim president, Jeanine Áñez, decreed that those who “misinform or cause uncertainty to the population” can be jailed for one to ten years. Since she has a record of forcing opposition radio stations off the air, critics fear this will become a tool to lock them up.
In El Salvador more than 2,000 people have been locked up for violating strict social-distancing rules, often defeating their purpose. Its Supreme Court has told the government to stop arbitrarily detaining people in inhumane conditions that are likely to spread the disease. But its fiery president, Nayib Bukele, has refused to obey it. Thus, covid-19 has precipitated a constitutional crisis in one of Latin America’s most violent countries.
Ethiopia’s elections, which are set for August, were supposed to herald the dawn of a new democratic era. They have been postponed and the government has assumed emergency powers. During previous states of emergency in 2016 and 2018, tens of thousands of dissidents were locked up in re-education camps or tortured. The current prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, has promised that such abuses are all in the past.
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