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DemocracyWatch: Pandemic power grabs all over the world

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DemocracyWatch: Pandemic power grabs all over the world
Long running protests against anti-Muslim citizenship laws in New Delhi have been broken up under coronavirus laws | Sanjeev Yadav/Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0. Some rights reserved.
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The coronavirus pandemic is not just changing how we live and work – it is also changing who has power and how they can use it.

Research from openDemocracy this week shows that more than 2 billion people live in countries whose parliaments have been suspended or restricted following the outbreak of coronavirus. 

Serbia, Turkey, Romania, Mongolia, Thailand, the Philippines, Zimbabwe and Morocco are just some of the countries that have detained journalists or enacted measures that could stifle reporting.