All throughout 2020 and 2021, many Western governments behaved in an authoritarian fashion and/or made reforms to their legal systems against basic charters of rights and freedoms. Each time, the justifications were always because ‘we’re in an emergency’, or, if decided by the judiciary, ‘the pandemic justifies this’. Some main points noted in various regions:
- From the start, March 2020, the majority of Western nations’ people supported restrictions of freedoms due to the ‘emergency’, some as high as 80% support. This has continued for more than 18 months, with many now still continuing to agree with issues such as limiting people’s rights and freedoms based on their vaccine passport status. Even though the vaccine does little to stop you getting the virus or transmitting it.
- Many Western publications – including The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, and National Review – have mused that China’s onerous clampdown on its citizenry might be the most effective response to COVID-19. Professor Neil Ferguson, a controversial former adviser to 10 Downing St. in its response to the pandemic, told the British newspaper The Times that he initially didn’t think it would be possible to follow the Chinese model of a stringent lockdown: “It’s a communist one-party state, we said. We couldn’t get away with it in Europe, we thought. … And then Italy did it. And we realized we could.”
- By December 2020, many EU countries quietly enacted laws that made lockdowns permanent features of pandemic responses. In Germany, for example, Angela Merkel’s party enacted lockdowns as ‘law’, based on one scientific paper claiming they worked, with zero debate allowed and no opposition. In the enactment, Merkel claimed that this single scientific paper shows that lockdowns are a scientific certainty, the same as gravity. You cannot argue against gravity since science proved it, and so the same now goes for lockdowns as a scientific certainty. (Note that there is no such thing as a scientific certainty. Science is all about debate, falsifying and testing claims, not about absolute facts).U.K.: Reform bills passed to outlaw ‘protesting loudly’ in public areas.
- U.K.: Rule by decree. As laid out by Lord Sumption (former Supreme Court justice), the governments of the West essentially ruled by decree. There were many months where there were no parliamentary debates, no questions allowed, and no judicial oversight. In addition, the government took control and ordered the police to enforce rules, rather than the police following the law. See Appendix on Sumption.
- In the USA and other countries, government bills and laws in are in the works to categorize protests and assembly rights against government measures (such as COVID mandates, lockdowns, or climate change issues), as ‘domestic terrorism’. The US Department of Homeland Security issued a Terrorism Bulletin that ‘democracy remains under imminent threat from ideologically-motivated violent extremists’, including groups ‘angered over COVID 19 restrictions.
- In Germany, German Intelligence was authorized to put ‘deniers’ under surveillance without warrants. The German Interior Ministry also explained that ‘extremists encourage supporters to ignore official orders and challenge the state monopoly on the use of force’. Germany also passed the ‘Infection Protection Act’ which formally grants the government the authority to issue whatever edicts it wants under the guise of protecting the public health. The government has been doing this anyway — ordering lockdowns, curfews, travel bans, banning demonstrations, raiding homes and businesses, ordering everyone to wear medical masks, harassing and arresting dissidents, etc. — but now it has been “legitimized” by the Bundestag.
- Many EU countries, as well as Australia, moved to criminalize peaceful protest – a fundamental right in any western nation. Peaceful protesters were met actively with tear gas, water cannons, and rubber bullets.
- The Canadian military acknowledged that they used propaganda techniques against their population, which is usually only done by totalitarian regimes.
- On Oct.19, 2021, the UK ‘Parliament’ extended the Coronavirus Act which continues to gives government ‘temporary’ emergency-measure powers indefinitely, without a vote, all the while literally laughing at the motion passing as if laughing at the sham of the democratic process – no oversight, no objection, no discussion. “If the ’emergency’ legislation can be casually extended with a hearty guffaw in a ‘democratic’ society, it’s neither an emergency, or a democracy.” (Quote Tweet SELF₿ANKT & SOVEREIGN, @selfbankt).
- House of Commons Deputy Speaker @eleanor4epping decides a vote to extend UK #CoronavirusAct 6mnths is NOT necessary saying “It’s not the mood of the House to vote on the issue.” It passes with a laugh & ridicule. @UKParliament is a shitshow & not fit for purpose. Democracy?”
Further notes:
- Suspension of basic rights, per Brian Peckford, former Premier of Newfounland, and the last surviving author of the 12 premiers/leaders who formed the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This was added to and on top of the Bill of Rights, only it solidifies the process so that no single federal leader can usurp the rights within Provinces. Section 2, 6, 7, and 15 are all in states of permanent violation. These include rights to assembly, association, movement/mobility, job-seeking/employment. These are all suspended under the clause in section 1, which allows for a provision of temporary suspension ‘if the government shows demonstrable justification’ (or emergency). No government has demonstrated this, no data, no ‘discovery’ of information to show a state of emergency, no debate, no counter-argument, no discussion among MPs. Political leaders are beholden to the citizens to take the public health issues into consideration along with all other public issues, not just health. Debate should occur, and elected MPs should decide. Instead, we have had 2 years of non-elected employees (Public Health Officers), who are NOT allowed to address Parliament, controlling our government and democracy. Only MPs/MLAs, elected representatives of the people, are legally allowed to speak/address issues at Parliament.
- Throughout 2020 and 2021, almost all legal challenges showing how lockdowns, vx mandates, and other government measures violate the charter of rights (basic UN human rights, constitutional freedoms, etc.) were thrown out basically with the judgement ‘we should believe our health officers that we are in a deadly pandemic’. One case in Alberta even had evidence accepted by the Provincial Health Officer, in that they agreed the PCR test was flawed, and does not test for a true case, but rather fragments of virus in healthy people. Still, verdict was ‘we should not be second-guessing our experts during a deadly pandemic’.
- Vaccine mandates. Most leaders and health officers publicly confirmed in Summer of 2021 that vaccine mandates and vaccine passport systems would ‘have too many constitutional and human rights issues’, ‘in a democracy’. Suddenly by fall 2021, they all implemented mandates and passport systems with no explanation on the human rights aspect.