Professor of International Relations Yossi Mekelberg has written for Arab News on how COVID-19 is eroding society's civic rights.
'In the last few months, hiding behind the urgent necessity to monitor and contain the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), governments in different parts of the world have been cracking down on various freedoms,' he writes.
'Many of the measures to contain and defeat COVID-19 intrinsically restrict some of our basic human and civil rights, including even the right to step out of our own home at will and travel whatever distance we like.
'While the public understands and generally accepts such measures when they are linked to scientific evidence and when it makes common sense, other restrictions — such as those which advance a government’s pre-existing agenda that might include cracking down on minority groups — are strongly objectionable.'
