Jonathan Freedland: Under cover of coronavirus, the world's bad guys are wreaking havoc
Under the cover of coronavirus, all kinds of wickedness are happening. Where you
and I see a global health crisis, the world’s leading authoritarians,
fearmongers and populist strongmen have spotted an opportunity – and they are
seizing it.
Of course, neither
left nor right has a monopoly on the truism that one should never let a good
crisis go to waste. Plenty of progressives share that conviction, firm that the
pandemic offers a rare chance to reset the way we organise our unequal
societies, our clogged cities, our warped relationship to the natural world.
But there are others – and they tend to be in power – who see this opening very
differently. For them, the virus suddenly makes possible action that in normal
times would exact a heavy cost. Now they can strike while the world looks the
other way.
For some, Covid-19
itself is the weapon of choice. Witness the emerging evidence that Bashar
al-Assad in Damascus and Xi Jinping in Beijing are allowing the disease to
wreak havoc among those groups whom the rulers have deemed to be unpersons,
their lives unworthy of basic protection. Assad is deliberately leaving Syrians
in opposition-held areas more vulnerable to the pandemic, according to Will
Todman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. As he
puts it: “Covid-19 has provided Assad a new opportunity to instrumentalize
suffering.”
Meanwhile, China
continues to hold 1 million Uighur Muslims in internment camps, where they
contend now not only with inhuman conditions but also a coronavirus
outbreak. ...
