Where We are Now: Diminishing Rights, Dwindling Freedoms and Glory Holes
Before we can move on and look at what it means to be free, we need to ground ourselves in an understanding of where we are at this current moment in time. Even the optimists among us, and I am usually one, know that 2020 was the shittest year yet, certainly in my life and I imagine most of yours. But that is just a number and 2021 potentially looks worse from where we are sat. When and where is this going to end?
Well, let’s start by understanding just how much an impact covid has had on the free world. We are going to use a bit of a human rights “lens”, as it can help us see how free we may be today.
According to Dunja Mijatović, Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights:
“2020 has been a disastrous year for human rights in Europe. While, increasingly, commitment to upholding human rights standards has been faltering all over the continent for several years, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the erosion of the democratic fabric of our society, on which protection of human rights ultimately depends. The pandemic has upended our lives in the same way that 9/11 and the 2008 financial crisis did, and possibly more so. It has also provided many governments with an ideal pretext to exploit fears and crack down on dissent, restrict people’s rights and pass emergency legislation that risks having long-term consequences, beyond the health crisis. I think it is not exaggerating to say that we are at a crossroads. The direction we decide to take now will shape the type of society we want to live in and pass on to future generations. That choice will determine whether we bolster our freedoms or relinquish them, promote participation or undermine democracy, empower people or marginalise them. We were not equal before the pandemic, and we have not been equal in the face of it. Those who were poor before it have become poorer; those who were disadvantaged now face even greater disadvantages. The case of older people is emblematic. In many of our member states they have paid the highest price, not only because of the health vulnerabilities necessarily associated with age, but also because of the social settings in which many of them live. Those living independently have also suffered because of the lockdown measures that have further isolated them from their families and the rest of the community.”
So, as usual, the poorest and most vulnerable are seeing their rights diminish especially rapidly and, in summary, humanity is at a bit of a cross-roads according to her.
Others feel a bit more outraged by all of this, perhaps rightly so. Commentator Ian Dunt labelled the recent coronavirus act 2020 act the "most extensive encroachment on British civil liberties ... ever seen outside of wartime".
Big Brother Watch also highlighted how the wave of emergency powers and extreme measures in response to the coronavirus pandemic have brought about the greatest loss of liberty in our country's history
Dr Vernon Coleman said: “Rights and freedoms we’d had since the Magna Carta, disappeared in a flash, once the Coronavirus Act was passed without most MPs having read it”.
The Light Newspaper, sees things through a slightly different lens. For them:
“Mass protests, rallies and demonstrations, together with ongoing email campaigns to MPs and representatives, legal actions in the High Court and huge petitions have done nothing to stop the direction of travel – under the guise of a health emergency which is in fact nothing of the sort. Ancient rights and natural liberties have been removed by stealth from the British people, using the same cover as every other authoritarian regime in history did, including those directing people into boxcars in Germany during the 1930s & ‘40s – ‘it’s for your safety.’”
Doesn’t look great does it so far, whatever our perspective?
Let’s dig a bit deeper…
Diminishing Human Rights in 2020
The main human rights that have been hit in 2020 are:
Freedom of Speech
It’s hard not to look to good old George Orwell, the author of 1984, at the minute, given the state of much of the world. I wonder what on earth he would think now?
Freedom of speech has never been more under attack in our lives than it is today. Of this there is no doubt in my mind, and my love and positive vibes go out to all of the brave men and women who are standing up for this fundamental right around the world. Many are facing severe oppression and attack. They need our prayers and action.
Indeed, in a recent International Centre for Journalists webinar with the UN special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression - Prof. David Kaye – he said:
"People have died because governments have lied, hidden information,
detained reporters, failed to level with people about the nature of
the threat, and criminalised individuals under the guise of 'spreading
false information’… … People have suffered because some governments
would rather protect themselves from criticism than allow people to
share information, learn about the outbreak, know what officials are
or are not doing to protect them.” He went on further to say:
“journalists should be carefully monitoring whether governments expand
“public health surveillance tools” beyond contact tracing and
critically important public health interventions. Rather ominously he
then follows on with: “One of the risks is that governments use this
moment to accomplish some objectives that they've held for many
years.”
All sounds potentially a bit sinister from where we are sat.
Freedom of Press
In its great shit list of awards and records, 2020 set a new personal best for numbers of journalists in jail in relation to their work as governments cracked down on coverage of covid or tried to suppress reporting on political unrest.
Indeed the Committee to Protect Journalists recorded at least 274 journalists in jail in relation to their work on December 1, 2020, exceeding the high of 272 in 2016
Yikes.
Hello Surveillance State
Contact tracing; thermal scans; anal swabs; drones; facial recognition cameras and immunity passports. Such has been the rapid state of expansion of the surveillance state over the last 12 months, it is a bit tough to know where to start from here and I will be looking to go into more depth on this in the months ahead. So, let me just offer a couple of tasty treats of what has been going on in this mad world.
According to Reuters, (who we wouldn’t necessarily trust): “China is currently building one of the world’s most sophisticated surveillance technology networks, with hundreds of millions of cameras in public places and increasing use of techniques such as smartphone monitoring and facial recognition. This year, cities and villages across the country have used the system for what the government has labelled “an all-out people’s war on coronavirus”.
And this is just the beginning… thinkers such as Muhammad Rahman are saying everything “points to a future where tech-enabled state surveillance becomes an unstoppable global trend.”
Welcome to 1984. Fuck.
Run for the hills I say! And fast.
Freedom to Practice Religion
For the first time ever, ever, ever humans near our terrain are not going to church. Not even with masks on. Our elderly neighbours have been robbed of one of the few points of social contact in their lives and access to the fabric that has bound them together for countless generations.
“It pains me to say this, but in certain quarters, religious liberty is fast becoming a disfavoured right,” Alito said. “The right of the free exercise of religion is not the only once-cherished freedom that is falling… Support for freedom of speech is also in danger.”
Over the waters in the US of A, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito Jr. offered a list of grievances about the state of individual rights in America, from the “unimaginable restrictions” imposed because of the pandemic.
“It pains me to say this, but in certain quarters, religious liberty is fast becoming a disfavoured right,” Alito said. “The right of the free exercise of religion is not the only once-cherished freedom that is falling… Support for freedom of speech is also in danger.”
Whatever the place of worship – mosque, church, shrine, synagogue or temple - being deprived of access to one of the core elements of life that binds so many of us together as humans should not be taken lightly.
It feels like something sacred may have been broken here.
Crazy Laws and Guidelines
On a more positive note, at least there have been some laughably bad laws proposed over the last 12 months to keep us having a giggle. These include (but are by no means limited to) New York, where these beauties came from:
Freedom to Fuck (Through Walls) The Traveller tells us about New
York's embrace of the face mask that the city's Health Department
recently encouraged residents to wear them while having sex. "Make it
a little kinky," the guidelines said. "Be creative with sexual
positions and physical barriers, like walls, that allow sexual contact
while preventing close face-to-face contact."
Shagging a wall would be a low point for a cool hound like me. What if it was a really thick or thin one? Honestly, you couldn't make this shit up.
Apparently impressed with this idea, health officials in Canada have since issued their own, even more explicit, tips: "Use barriers, like walls (e.g. glory holes), that allow for sexual contact but prevent close face-to-face contact."
I wouldn't advise googling "glory hole”, or using google at all for that matter. You may just need to use your imagination here. Here is something to help the thought process:
Just to really rub it in, and without wanting to pick too much on New York, their governor also recently proposed a bill allowing the state to “detain anyone suspected of carrying a contagious disease, like COVID-19". Those detained for this heinous crime could be held in a medical facility or “other appropriate facility or premises designated by the governor.”
Jeez. A sneeze and you’re a suspect.
Some real crazy dogs over there for sure. Proper howling mad.
A final word from Da Wolf
There are no two ways about it, the very nature of human rights and civil liberties is being redefined by covid and its aftermath.
We don’t need to be genius’ here, we can feel it in our bones that we are facing the largest loss of freedom and liberty that we have seen in our lives, with wide-ranging enaction of emergency powers that could last years.
Once people have grown accustomed to these life-changing emergency measures, their seems a good chance that the top dogs will be reluctant to let the (highly useful) state of emergency end.
They have not taken an inch, they have taken a mile.
As someone once before said: “We are at a crossroads.”
Which route are we going to take?
It is up to us.
