Amnesty

Anyone who openly questions or criticises the measures taken by their government in the face of the sars-cov-2 threat risks censorship or sanctions. A recent ^[1] report by Amnesty International rightly denounces the decline of freedom of expression around the world at the end of 2019 and in 2020. But it simply ignores the abuses perpetrated by States and their relays, from the beginning of 2021, in the name of a “necessary” vaccination. Another striking element: the report puts forward the idea of a “viral spread of misinformation”, which is said to undermine the vaccination cause.

Censorship has become the norm all over the world, the Amnesty report tells us. In China, for example, health professionals and professional and citizen journalists who tried to sound the alarm about the health situation as early as December 2019 were targeted. In February 2020, there were reportedly 5,511 criminal investigations for “fabricating and deliberately spreading false and harmful information”.

Decline in the freedom to demonstrate…

The covid epidemic (or rather, its management) has led to the decline of many rights (including the right to demonstrate) that we thought were secure. “Yet, looking carefully at 2019 and 2020, a disturbing constant emerges. European authorities did not only crack down on protests in 2019. In 2020, they also used the pandemic as a smokescreen that allowed them to continue their practices aimed at silencing dissent”, we read in an article of 29 September 2020 ^[2], also written on behalf of Amnesty.

…and of expression

The Amnesty article and report agree that the covid epidemic ultimately resulted in a decline of our fundamental freedoms, which “expressed” itself in particular through censorship and the muzzling of critical voices. Both, however, only target the abuses committed by States at the beginning of the health crisis.

What, then, of all those that may have been committed by governments in 2021 in the name of the vaccination cause? One example is the case of Ole Skambraks, suspended on 22 October from his post at the German public broadcaster (SWR) for having denounced, in an open letter ^[3], eighteen months of media dysfunction in the context of the health crisis.

Absence of debate

Amnesty does, admittedly, call on States to “stop using the pandemic as an excuse to prevent the dissemination of information, independent debate and scrutiny.” Given the glaring absence of debate on key questions linked to the epidemic, one might be tempted to believe that Amnesty is implicitly denouncing the absence of debate on the relevance of the anti-covid “vaccine”. Not really, in fact, when one reads that on 22 September Amnesty International launched an action entitled “Cent jours pour rattraper le retard – Deux milliards de doses maintenant !”. Amnesty's position is unequivocal and brooks no debate.

The icing on the cake: “misinformation” about anti-covid vaccines

The Amnesty report also highlights the overabundance of misleading or false information, which prevents citizens from making informed decisions about their health “at a time when global efforts are being made to ensure that vaccines are distributed all over the world and available to all…”. Against all expectations, the Amnesty report explains that the information flooding the internet and social networks instils doubt in citizens' minds and causes “vaccine hesitancy”.

Hasn't the undermining carried out by the cheerleaders of the vaccination cause, through censorship and an overabundance of anxiety-inducing information about covid, turned public opinion ^[4], on the contrary, towards a trivialisation of this vaccination, which is anything but trivial?

By Sylvie Huygen, citizen journalist at BAM!

[1] https://www.md-universal.eu/images/POL3047512021FRENCH.pdf

[2] https://www.amnesty.org/fr/latest/news/2020/09/will-our-right-to-protest-ever-be-fully-returned/

[3] https://bam.news/en/editorials-op-eds/i-can-t-take-it-any-more

[4] https://www.cnews.fr/france/2020-12-03/sondage-61-des-francais-nont-pas-lintention-de-se-faire-vacciner-contre-le

Photo source:
© Yves-Fonck

Quotations from English-language sources are translated back here from the French.