It did not take long. Three weeks after the outbreak, the Hungarian parliament conferred formidable executive powers on prime minister Viktor Orbán, allowing him to rule by decree. Israel was even faster. Immediately after the government announced a nation-wide lockdown, the Justice Minister barred the courts from convening, a move that indefinitely postponed the corruption hearings against prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Meanwhile, in Chile the government sent the military to public squares once occupied by protesters.
The introduction of emergency measures to address the Covid-19 crisis is undoubtedly necessary, but numerous governments have also exploited the pandemic to undermine democratic principles, violate human rights and perpetrate crimes against citizens and migrants.
However, the pandemic has not only unleashed new state crimes; it is also exposing underlying and largely hidden crimes. Like an earthquake that shatters a city, filling the streets with debris and leaving only the bare infrastructure exposed, Covid-19 has been uncovering the structural violence that states have instituted against their own populations. Also like an earthquake, the destruction and death in the pandemic’s wake are neither inevitable nor entirely natural.
