Many countries have been criticised for approaching non-compliance with movement control orders and face mask mandates in an overly punitive manner. - BERNAMA/File pic
Many countries have been criticised for approaching non-compliance with movement control orders and face mask mandates in an overly punitive manner. - BERNAMA/File pic

Any serious threat to a nation, whether it be terrorism or a pandemic, presents complex challenges to the maintenance of civil liberties, freedom and human rights.

Governments must balance the demands of public health and safety against the individual freedoms of their citizens, which is also their job to protect. Needless to say, 2020 has been a yearlong balancing act that has seen governments striving to safeguard human rights even while imposing necessary restrictions.

Covid-19 has forced governments globally to enact extreme emergency measures that have unfortunately curtailed many civil liberties and human rights, due to the grave threat posed by the pandemic.

Entire populations the world over have endured restrictions on their freedom of movement, freedom of assembly, the right to work, the right to protest, the right, even, to attend mosques, churches, temples and synagogues. No one wanted this to happen.

Poverty rates in Southeast Asia are set to increase for the first time in 20 years due to forced business closures and resulting unemployment, severely reduced tourism and overall economic contraction. No government would self-impose such hardships were the alternative not frighteningly worse.

Many countries have been criticised for approaching non-compliance with movement control orders and face mask mandates in an overly punitive manner. Sizeable fines and jail time levelled against people already suffering job loss and financial hardship have been slammed as excessively harsh.

These criticisms, however, fail to recognise the severity of Covid-19, the full extent of which is known best to health ministries and the experts responsible for saving lives.

No one can argue that lockdown policies have not regrettably disempowered, disenfranchised and dispossessed populations around the world, but they have kept people alive. These measures would normally be shocking and eligible for mass opposition, except that they have all been done for the sake of public health and safety.

It is true that the intrusiveness of government control has been unprecedented both in extent and in scale. For many activists this is very worrying. However, human rights organisations and activists appear petty when criticising restrictive measures enforced to save lives.

Activists must not miss the forest for the trees; the freedoms and rights that contribute to our quality of life rely first upon the preservation of life itself.

Sacrifices are being made all around and it is a mistake to portray these emergency measures as simply a power grab by governments while those governments are simultaneously facing the loss of billions in revenue, reduced gross domestic product, fractured international supply chains and looming economic crises, all to protect their citizens from disease.

We must maintain a sense of solidarity with our governments and persevere together until this calamity passes.

Dec 10 marks International Human Rights Day, and the United Nations has declared the theme this year to be "Standing Up for Human Rights". This is appropriate. By most accounts, the pandemic is waning. At least three vaccines appear to be on the horizon, and next year should begin seeing a gradual return to normalcy.

While it is going to be crucial for human rights defenders around the world to ensure that governments do not prolong restrictions once public health risks recede, we cannot reasonably suspect that any state has imposed these measures happily, nor that they have any interest in maintaining them longer than necessary.

It is fair to say that we are entering a pivotal moment. Will the emergency measures enforced to preserve public health be reversed once the threat dissipates?

While it is the responsibility of civil society and human rights advocates across the region and around the globe to ensure that they do, they must not adopt an adversarial stance.

Further than that, "Standing Up for Human Rights", as we move forward, will also require us to work with governments to better prepare for crises in the future so that trade-offs do not have to be made between public safety and human rights; both can be preserved without unavoidable compromise.

Not only must we work to reverse the restrictions on freedom imposed this year, we must also work to ensure they are never again necessary.

The writer is the founder of Centre for Human Rights Research and Advocacy


The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the New Straits Times