April 14, 2021
Officially, We Are in a Dictatorship
“The governments of the countries of central and south-eastern Europe have used the pandemic to tighten control over the justice systems, to restrict the freedoms of citizens and to discriminate still further against marginalised communities, states the Amnesty report.
Governments have often targeted those who criticised the way they managed the COVID-19 pandemic.
Romania is one of the countries whose governments have abusively used existing legislation and newly adopted legislation to reduce citizens’ freedom of expression.
The pandemic that began in 2019 saw an increase in state control over justice and the mass media and endangered minorities already subject to a certain degree of discrimination in Central and South-East Europe, said the international rights watchdog Amnesty International in its annual report published on Monday, writes BalkanInsight.
Amnesty’s secretary general, Agnès Callamard, declared in a press release: “COVID-19 has brutally exposed and deepened inequality both within and between countries, and highlighted the staggering disregard our leaders have for our shared humanity.”
The report, “The State of the World’s Human Rights”, covering 149 countries, says that governments “took insufficient measures to protect journalists and whistleblowers, including health workers, sometimes targeting those who criticised the government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic”.
This occurred in several countries, among them Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Hungary, Kosovo, Poland, Serbia and Turkey.
The governments of countries such as Bosnia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia and Turkey “abusively used existing legislation and new legislation to reduce freedom of expression”.
Most of the countries of Central Europe and South-East Europe faced problems concerning press freedom, and investigative journalists in Kosovo faced threats, insults and attacks, the report states…”
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