It has also been branded “insane” by Donald Trump Junior, which was used as a distorted form of justification for the law by Minister Simon Harris. However, criticism has also come from Paul Murphy of People Before Profit from the opposite end of the political spectrum to the Trump family. There has also been criticism from human rights bodies.
The crucial provisions are Section 7 and Section 8.
Section 7 is the mechanism by which offences against those of protected characteristics can be criminalised. At one level it is an admirable measure. Indeed, I have represented people with disabilities, who are one of the categories included.
More controversially, transgenderism is one of the protected categories. It was surely not hate speech for the feminist author Germaine Greer to say that a man who becomes a woman can never really understand what it is to be a woman.
In my view it was a serious violation of fair comment to no platform Greer for the comments – no matter whether one agrees with her ideas or not. To criminalise such a statement would be a return to the Dark Ages of the Papal Index.
One hopes that a statement such as that made by Greer would be protected as legitimate political or cultural criticism, which are important delimiters and qualifiers contained in the Act, but the defence would arise only if the matter actually came to Court. The existence of a criminal charge might still be bandied about to damage the reputation of an individual or publisher. Malicious prosecutions are not unheard of in the Emerald Isle.
Perhaps what really stoked the ire was Greer also stating “because he does not have a smelly vagina”. This brings us to the subject of ridicule. Ronald Dworkin wrote an article on the right to ridicule inspired by the Danish Cartoons incident.
ridicule is a distinct kind of expression: its substance cannot be repackaged in a less offensive rhetorical form without expressing something very different from what was intended….
So, in a democracy no one, however powerful or important, enjoys a right not to be insulted or offended. Christopher Hitchens and the English judge Stephan Sedley have also remarked that any freedom to speak inoffensively is worthless.
In more carefree times, political opponents Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley came together as pundits at the behest of a failing network for the 1968 Democratic and Republican Party Conventions. This has recently been documented in a film called ‘Best of Enemies’, which is now a West End play by the same name.
William F. Buckley was the archangel of neo-conservatism, while Gore Vidal was an embodiment of what now seems an excessive liberalism. They deliberated on a state of siege, with riots in Chicago and democratic legitimation in question. America, along with the rest of the world, was on the brink, just like today.
The debate famously culminated after the Republican Convention nominating Richard Nixon, who now seems a more sympathetic figure when compared to what followed him. Indeed, Nixon’s statement in 1969 that government has a great role to play in health care, ‘but we must always make sure that our doctors will be working for their patients and not for the federal government,’ is perhaps an idea that still has some merit; especially when one considers the damage of the top-down, dictatorial approach taken by many governments in response to Covid-19.
In front of a live TV audience of millions, Buckley vented an anger, which he later regretted, calling Vidal ‘a queer’; in response to Vidal describing Buckley as a crypto-Nazi.
Let’s consider both comments in the light of the current Irish legislation, Section 7 and Section 8 in particular. Buckley’s comment is arguably hate speech directed against a protected characteristic, i.e. gay people, although a term that was originally meant as an insult has since been appropriated by the gay community as almost a badge of honour, in a way similar to the artistic licence taken with the “n-word” among African-American (or Black?) communities. Can offensive terms be used by those with a protected characteristic?
Moreover, in a 1974 essay for the New York Review of Books ‘Fascinating Fascism’ on Leni Riefenstahl, Susan Sontag wondered how it had come about that ‘a regime which persecuted homosexuals [had] become a gay turn-on?’ Under the current legislation would it be a crime to suggest that the Nazi (anti-)aesthetic could be ‘a turn on’ to a gay person?
A latter-day Gore Vidal might also be prosecuted for branding a right-wing Republican such as Buckley a crypto-Nazi, as Section 8 criminalises grossly trivialising genocide, crimes against humanity and peace.
Crucially Section 11 of the act allows for a defence of criticism with respect to protected characteristics. But this does not apply, remarkably, to crimes against humanity under Section 8. To this we now turn.
The language of Section 8 which criminalises inter alia crimes against humanity may be desirable in principle, although the overly broad language sets off alarm bells.
Arguably, condoning or negating such crimes ought to be a criminal offence. Imagine being an Armenian and having to listen to Turkish propaganda justifying what is considered the first orchestrated attempt to eliminate a national group in the twentieth century?
But this may easily become a legitimate subject for debate, such as exploring whether the Malthusian policies of the British Crown in Ireland during the Famine of 1845-51 should be described as a genocide.
Also, who decides whether a genocide has taken place, a body of historians, or a court of law? Do we need to allow the fog of war to dissipate before any such adjudications with criminal ramifications are determined?
Could it now be an offence to claim that Putin’s war in the Ukraine is really about Great Powers competing for resources rather than an attempt to eliminate Ukrainian national identity? By assessing the attendant brutality of the war in terms of Great Power politics, would a publisher or individual then be “trivialising” a crime against humanity.
A measured denial of genocide – such as claims that the ICC’s Putin arrest warrant was based on State Department funded report that debunked itself – is completely different to an ahistorical assessment of a wide range of primary sources. The crucial issue here is adherence to the facts. It must be open for historians, journalists and lawyers to scrutinise questionable narratives around controversial events, such as the Kennedy Assassination. A distinction perhaps is that crimes against humanity are generally on a scale such as to make them undeniable.
Criminalising that which grossly trivialises crimes against humanity is far too opaque and subjective a ground for a prosecution. The Act ought to be challenged under Article 40.6.1 of the Irish Constitution: ‘The right of the citizens to express freely their convictions and opinions.’
An Article 26 Reference (by the President to the Supreme Court required within seven days of his receiving it) poses the risk however that if is unsuccessful there will be no further opportunity challenge any aspect of it in an Irish court.
There may, however, be certain unintended consequences of the Act that could be used to advance progressive causes.
In international law there are established candidates which are part of customary international law so called lex lata (established principles of customary international law), and more speculative controversial candidates over which there is an increasing lack of consensus, called in international law terms de lega ferenda (not yet firmly established).
Thus, for example, one potential crime against humanity supported from the 1970’s proposed by Richard A. Falk is ecocide or crimes against the environment. Since such a crime involves various forms of intent and can include a conspiracy, it would involve at least the meeting of minds of the major oil and gas companies, and those who profit from them, including legislators.
There is also a potential new crime against humanity for which there is less authority to date of economicide. Perhaps all of those who peddle a neoliberal world view, or support vulture or cuckoo fund, or allowed wealth to be siphoned off by Big Pharma during Covid-19 could and should be prosecuted!
It could be said that the lifting of the eviction ban by the government is a form of economicide, as it is indirectly fuelling far-right wing extremism, led by gangsters attacking people with baseball bats. Thus, arguably, government policies, or the lack thereof, have indirectly generated racial hatred, and racism (speech directed against a protected characteristic) is criminalised by the Act.
The framing of the innocent is also a de ledge ferenda candidate as a crime against humanity. One might argue that the Garda and/or the Department of Justice have condoned or been in denial of this.
The Act is also likely to be challenged, and is subject to the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights. Irish courts are bound, but rarely properly observe the Charter, despite the interpretative obligation. In reality we follow the ECHR selectively, ignoring it if it is too awkward, as in the nefarious Dwyer case.
In a number of cases such as Jersild v Denmark (1994) and Lingens v Austria (1986) the ECHR have indicated under Article 10 of the Convention that speech encompasses a right to outrage and shock. These are deemed hallmarks of pluralism, tolerance and broad-mindedness in a society.
Not everything is permitted. Thus, Holocaust denial or racist speech are excluded from protection, but the parameters are wide and restricted categories do not go quite as far as this Act.
The crucial case of Lehideux and Isorni v France (1998) is particularly instructive. Here Le Monde newspaper were protected under Article 10 of the Convention for publishing an article celebrating the career of Marshall Pétain, the Vichy French leader who collaborated with the Nazis. The content was not set out in a way to negate or revise clearly established facts.
It should also be noted that no action of publication or broadcast of hateful material is required, bringing us into the territory of thought crimes. The much-trumpeted defence of legitimate artistic and political criticism only applies to possession of such material.
Considering the imposition of close to absolute liability for the distribution of so-called offensive material on the internet, and even a reversal of the burden of proof, it is no wonder Elton Musk is concerned. He may be put out of business!
Moreover, the term ‘may be prosecuted’ is very loose statutory language. On whose behest?
Let us stress test the crucial sections of the Act against potential scenarios.
Stating that Leo Varadkar is like Verruca Salz from Willie Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, a spoilt privileged brat, and a wart on the body politic offence falls short of being a criminal offence on a literal interpretation of the Act. But what if one called him a crypto-Nazi or inferred that Nazism could be a turn-on to him? Would that be grossly trivialising crimes against humanity or demeaning to a protected category? Crucially, the defence of political criticism is unavailable for crimes against humanity.
Adrian Hardiman, our finest judge since Declan Costello, once addressed my King’s Inn class to defend his decision in the Portmanock Golf Club case (2009) where he sanctioned the barring of women members from the club, much to the distress of the Equality Authority, which had taken the case. He then argued that a lesbian rugby club should not be obliged to accept him as a member given he was not a lesbian and couldn’t play rugby. These comments by a Supreme Court judge were in a public place. We may have to shut down, or sanitise beyond recognition, the hallowed debating societies of Ireland in response to this Act.
Is Michael O’ Leary the Chairman of Ryanair in his denial of man-made climate change grossly trivialising the crime against humanity that is ecocide? Or what if one were to say that supposed climate change activists including the IMF and Bill Gates are themselves guilty of crimes against humanity for condoning Malthusian practices, rather than focusing on regulating the extractive corporations devouring the planet?
I have been a book collector of first editions since I was sixteen. One book in my collection is a first edition of Vladimir Nabokov Lolita, (1959) which narrates in baroque language an affair between a middle-aged man and an under-age girl. I also possess a first edition of the notorious fascist writer Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s Journey to the End of Night (1932). In possessing works that seemingly supports crimes against humanity, and another that undermines protected characteristics am I guilty of an offence?
Even if I am not prosecuted, does the very existence of such an offence generate opprobrium towards great literature?
One fears that even the great Dostoevsky’s books may soon be de-platformed if any of these are deemed a “Kremlin-favoured work.”
Simon Harris has suggested that there is no conspiracy, or campaign being orchestrated against free speech in response to condemnation. The jury is still decidedly out on that question. Perhaps what we see at work is a coalition of interests, or a just a confederacy of dunces.
A chill wind blows. Slow train coming and more acts to follow.
What I don’t find nice, and I really don’t need, is people clapping. I don’t need rainbows. I don’t care if people clap until their hands bleed with rainbows tattooed on their faces. I don’t even (whisper it) need Colonel Tom, lovely man as he clearly is…
The coronavirus crisis has shone a light on lots of good and bad things in this country. It is of course to be welcomed that key workers, including those for the NHS and social care, are being increasingly valued. I hope the reality is dawning that immigrants and BAME staff are vital to the NHS and we couldn’t manage without them.
But don’t feel you need to clap. Enough with the rainbows. When this ends, people need to show their value of key-working staff in practical ways; pay them enough to be able to live in our cities, and recognise, support and welcome immigrant staff who prop this country up. Listen to the views of NHS workers when they raise concerns, address the culture of blame and bureaucracy. Anonymous NHS Doctor, 2020[i]
Mediated Isolation
Cocooned in state-imposed lockdown, many of us succumbed to media binges while absentmindedly doing the housework, feeding the kids or, my own personal bête noire, chasing the kids down to do their homework. For some this might entail spending a sizable proportion of their waking hours perched in front of flickering TV screens while others opted for being serenaded by the droning tones of radio heads defining their versions of a ‘national reality’, from which we were physically excluded.
Internet and social media platforms have also served to distract us from excess navel gazing by informing us of FB ‘friends’ consumption habits that day, conjectures as to when the ‘circenses’ of sport will return to lighten up our beleaguered days and the travails of celebrities struggling to survive their privileged lockdowns, while providing anodyne and impractical advice on how we too might achieve elevated states of consciousness.
However, no matter which media is our poison of choice, it is hard to escape the constant, mind-numbing refrain that ‘we are all in this together’, facing the same existential threat irrespective of our status in society, our relative wealth, cultural and religious ethos and any other distinguishing features, real or imagined. Only by sticking together will we be able to defeat our contagious foe, or so the story goes.
Never ones to let a good crisis go to waste, the advertising industry has swiftly conceived and produced a slew of adverts to hawk their clients’ wares by tapping into the positive sentiments of this catchphrase. Praising frontline workers or highlighting our newfound unity – separated but together – they strive to manipulate the emotions and purchasing decisions of their target audiences.
Some of us feel stressed during this time, but there are many things we can do to help us mind our mental health and wellbeing. Staying connected will help us all get through. Visit https://t.co/cf8uvz2CF8 for advice and support for your physical and mental wellbeing. pic.twitter.com/Eu106PZM3k
But are we really all in this together? Has the Covid-19 pandemic impacted us all in a similar manner? Or has it and the measures imposed to tackle it impacted upon different sectors of our societies?
Mortality Rates
The first and most obvious disparity of impact has been the varying mortality rates between different age groups. Amongst those diagnosed with Covid-19, people over 80 were seventy times more likely to succumb to the virus, than those under 40 and the death rate amongst males has been seen to be greater than amongst females. A Public Health England report revealed a higher mortality rate amongst members of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) groups than in White ethnic groups, those born outside the U.K. and Ireland as well as, unsurprisingly, ‘those in a range of caring occupations including social care and nursing auxiliaries and assistants; those who drive passengers in road vehicles for a living including taxi and minicab drivers and chauffeurs; those working as security guards and related occupations; and those in care homes.’[ii]
However, it could be argued that these facts should not be used to detract from the fact that we are all in this together. After all, Covid-19 resulting in higher mortality rates amongst certain age categories is surely just a characteristic of this virus, similar to how the second wave of the 1918 flu virus disproportionately resulted in deaths amongst young men and women in their 20s and 30s, ‘while often sparing the very young and the very old.’[iii] Similarly, there are obvious reasons why people on the frontline and who have been dealing directly with the public have experienced greater rates of infection and higher mortality rates. Although the higher rates of death amongst BAME groups is evidently concerning, it too requires greater examination to be able to determine its exact cause.
Socio-Economic Disparities
While one might claim pathogens are ‘democratic by nature’,[iv] in the sense that viruses do not consciously target potential victims or particular social groups, certain social and economic factors clearly influence their ease of dissemination and transmission.
In the United States, according to the epidemiologist Camara Phyllis Jones, the higher infection rates amongst African and Latin American communities can be at least partly attributed to their being at a greater risk of exposure and less protected. Other contributing factors include the existence of socio-economic and health disparities, themselves the outcome of historical segregation and endemic racism,[v] as well as the increased levels of contact with environmental pollution and lower rates of access to health care.[vi]
In many parts of the United States, people of colour make up a higher proportion of some low-paid professions that have elevated risks of exposure to the virus—those who staff grocery stores, drive buses and work at food plants, for example. Also, COVID-19 is deadlier for people with chronic conditions, including diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular disease. These have a higher incidence in many minority ethnic and racial groups.[vii]
In the U.K., considerations such as ‘crowded housing and working conditions’ have been advanced as reasons for the divergences in infection and death ratings between ethnic minorities and white people. For example, whereas only 2% of white people in the U.K. are living in crowded conditions, overcrowding is far more prevalent amongst minority ethnic groups with as many as 30% of Bangladeshi, 16% of Pakistani and 15% of black African households being overcrowded.[viii]
Social Determinants of Health
According to Dr. Enam Haque, a GP based in Manchester, while BAME groups, particularly from South Asia, are more prone to diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure, which does increase their risk of contracting Covid-19, a more significant role is played by the social determinants of health.[ix]
As Farrell, McAvoy and Wilde explain
Health is not just the outcome of genetic or biological processes but is also influenced by the social and economic conditions in which we live. These influences have become known as the ‘social determinants of health’. Inequalities in social conditions give rise to unequal and unjust health outcomes for different social groups.[x]
(i) Social determinants contribute to health inequalities between social groups. This is because the effects of social determinants of health are not distributed equally or fairly across society.
(ii) Social determinants can influence health both directly and indirectly. For example, damp housing can directly contribute to respiratory disorders, while educational disadvantage can limit access to employment, raising the risk of poverty and its adverse impact on health.
(iii) Social determinants of health are interconnected. For example, poverty is linked to poor housing, access to health services or diet, all of which are in turn linked to health.
(iv) Social determinants operate at different levels. Structural issues, such as socioeconomic policies or income inequality, are often termed ‘upstream’ factors. While ‘downstream’ factors like smoking or stress operate at an individual level – and can be influenced by upstream factors.[xi]
The social determinants which have placed minority ethnic groups at a health disadvantage already as well as other vulnerable groups – less economically secure white people, the homeless and so forth – have led to their members being at greater risk of falling victim to Covid-19. It is critical these factors are addressed, not just in a piecemeal fashion or through a short-term approach in response to this pandemic, but comprehensively with structures being put in place to reduce the health inequities experienced by BAME communities and other vulnerable groups, as well as ensuring equitable access to health services.
— Padraig O'Reilly Photojournalist (@padraig_reilly) May 6, 2020
People around the world have been obliged to adapt to living in relative isolation, frequently separated from their loved ones due to stringent lockdowns. They have found themselves in straitened conditions on reduced incomes, with many worried as to whether their pre-Covid-19 jobs will still be there when the economy reopens. The vulnerable in countries such as India, South Africa or the Philippines, are faced with the Catch-22 situation of abiding by savage lockdowns, facing potential starvation and severe malnutrition for their families, or venturing forth at the risk of violent beatings or worse at the hands of the police for breaking state-imposed lockdowns.
As Joseph Natoli writes, the rich face no such dilemmas.
Those who live on dividends and interest from investments face no Catch-22. Private planes take them where they think they will be safer. Sheltering in place on your yacht with a serving crew is a safe sort of isolation. It’s in fact not much different than life before the pandemic. A cell phone and zoom keep you actively tending your horde. A top 20% meritocratic class has already been working from home, not bound by office or punching a wage clock. Life’s not much different for them. Nannies and tutors, daily tested, can handle, as usual, the offspring. Someone — not you — will cook and clean. Life’s not much different. No Catch-22 here…[xiii]
One of the most vocal advocates for the re-opening of the economy and ending the lockdown measures in place is the controversial billionaire Elon Musk. He even went so far as openly defying the local authorities in the US to reopen his flagship Tesla auto assembly plant in Fremont, California, which public health officials had ordered shut down some two months previously. Due to a complicated pay deal Musk had negotiated with Tesla, which could culminate in the ‘biggest executive pay windfall in global corporate history,’ opening this plant was critical to help him reach the required targets.[xiv]
While, it might be argued that Musk was right in his arguments about opening the country to business to prevent economic devastation, whatever his personal interest, this is not the issue here. If an ordinary U.S. citizen had defied the public health authorities as Musk did, publicly defying the civic authorities to arrest him as he joined his workers in the factory,[xv] would they have got away with it? Having got his way, Musk can now sit back in comfortable isolation, while his workers run the risk of contracting any circulating viruses, as he waits for his bonus to come home to daddy.
Rich Man, Poor Man
During Covid-19, the ultra-rich have managed to increase their already obscene share of the world’s wealth, as poor people around the world have struggled to survive. A report by Americans for Tax Fairness reveals that between 18 March and 19 May, in the midst of state lockdowns and business closures, the wealth of Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Bill Gates (Microsoft), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Warren Buffett (Berkshire Hathaway) and Larry Ellison (Oracle) grew by $75.5 billion. The personal wealth of Elon Musk alone, grew by 48% or $11.8 billion.[xvi]
At the same time, the severe impositions of movement control and lockdowns globally have disproportionally affected the more vulnerable members of our societies. While things may be booming for the wealthiest, many of the poorest and most defenceless communities are subject to violent and humiliating punishments to ensure they stick to quarantines, leaving them at the risk of starvation. Alberto Ruíz, who sits on a resident’s social organisation in the deprived Tacumbú neighbourhood of Asunción emphasises the lack of support that has been provided to lockdowned families deprived of any income and how people have been instructed ‘to stay at home, to protect your family. But in poor neighbourhoods, you have to go out to earn a living: if you don’t, you die of hunger.’[xvii]
As Arundhati Roy writes, encapsulating the horrors of those most affected by the Indian lockdown, migrant workers and their families.
Many driven out by their employers and landlords, millions of impoverished, hungry, thirsty people, young and old, men, women, children, sick people, blind people, disabled people, with nowhere else to go, with no public transport in sight, began a long march home to their villages. They walked for days, towards Badaun, Agra, Azamgarh, Aligarh, Lucknow, Gorakhpur — hundreds of kilometres away. Some died on the way. They knew they were going home potentially to slow starvation. Perhaps they even knew they could be carrying the virus with them, and would infect their families, their parents and grandparents back home, but they desperately needed a shred of familiarity, shelter and dignity, as well as food, if not love. As they walked, some were beaten brutally and humiliated by the police, who were charged with strictly enforcing the curfew. Young men were made to crouch and frog jump down the highway. Outside the town of Bareilly, one group was herded together and hosed down with chemical spray.[xviii]
Philip Alston, the former United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, accuses many states of having enacted policies reeking of social Darwinism, by prioritising the wealthiest to the detriment of the poor.[xix] Looking at how entire countries have been shut down by governments, many of whom have failed to make even minimal efforts to protect the most vulnerable members of their societies, it is hard to disagree.
Covid-19 and minority ethnic groups
From early May, New York City reported over twice as many deaths amongst the African and Latin American communities per 100,000 residents compared to white people. The Bronx, with the highest concentration of African Americans, had the city’s highest rates of deaths and hospitalisation.[xx] Data from early June indicates that Black Americans have been throughout the U.S. been 2.4 times more likely to succumb to Covid-19 than White Americans.[xxi]
This disparity of impact on black and Asian communities is also an issue of serious concern in the U.K. Harriet A. Washingtonwrites how
In April, the UK Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre estimated that 35% of people in intensive care with COVID-19 are black, Asian or members of other minority ethnic groups, nearly triple their proportion in the UK population. The first ten physicians in the United Kingdom known to have died from COVID-19 were also from black, Asian or minority ethnic groups.[xxii]
Racial Inequality in the U.K.
A Public Health England report, Covid-19: review of disparities in risks and outcomes, highlighted the role that deprivation can play in exacerbating infection and mortality rates.
The mortality rates from COVID-19 in the most deprived areas were more than double the least deprived areas, for both males and females… ONS analysis shows that between 1 March and 17 April 2020 the deprived areas in England had more than double the mortality rate from COVID-19 than the least deprived areas.[xxiii]
Given the relatively impoverished status of BAME groups, as evidenced in their far higher concentration in impoverished locales such as the most deprived 10% neighbourhoods, their vulnerability to Covid-19 is further aggravated.[xxiv]
Ethnic minority workers also tend to be employed in more insecure and more poorly regulated work with a Carnegie U.K. Trust, UCL and Operation Black Vote report noting that BAME millennials were some 47% more likely to be on ’notoriously unstable “zero-house” contracts.’ As a result, they have been disproportionately engaged as key workers in front-line positions, placing them at greater risk of catching the virus.[xxv]
The situation for migrants to the U.K. employed in front-line positions, necessitating direct contact with the public, is if anything even more precarious. A particularly tragic case was that of Rajesh Jayaseelan who succumbed to the virus alone in Northwick Park hospital on 11 April. Rajesh, who had come to London about a decade earlier to provide for his family, had starved in his rented accommodation for several days. He had informed his wife he did not want anyone to know of his condition, as he feared being cast out on the street, as had happened at his previous lodging where the landlord had evicted him due to the risk of his contracting the virus as a Uber driver. By the time he made it to the hospital where he passed away, he was already critically ill. He left behind a wife and two young children, to whom he bade one final farewell in a last video call from his hospital bed.[xxvi]
The situation in South Africa clearly illustrates the social and economic divisions that existed in society prior to Covid-19 and how they have remained in place during the virus and punitive lockdown. Rather than creating a national unity where everybody feels they are in it together, the pandemic and, in particular, the actions taken to combat it have in face served to reinforce the social schisms. As Patrick Bond writes:
The lockdown and social-distancing mandates simply won’t work in the overcrowded townships, which traditionally under apartheid were built merely as the urban holding cells of a reserve army of migrant labor… Many workers and most of the massive unemployed precariat were immediately without income as the full lockdown began on March 27, just as the state safety net was fraying… So as Covid-19 has struck, the country’s extreme inequality has been exacerbated, and the state’s long-standing delivery shortcomings stand exposed… For many people suffering what were already recessionary conditions, coronavirus seems the least of their concerns.[xxvii]
Bond quotes a local activist who explains that while people understand the potential threat of coronavirus ‘it is here for a short period, while we have been living under these dangerous conditions since 2000.’[xxviii]
Le coronavirus, c’est l’État (the coronavirus is the state) [xxix]
As she recounts issues of police harassment and oppression in the tower block estate of La Caravelle located in the commune of Villeneuve-la-Garenne, Malika points out a boy of 13, who looks younger, and relates how a couple of days previously he had frantically knocked on her door pleading for help as the police were around.[xxx]
Another resident, Taha Amghar, details how a body of police followed him home, entered his flat and beat him with their batons. They had then detained him overnight, and refused him access to legal representation. Rather than receiving any apology for this completely unnecessary detention, Taha was later issued with a deportation notice on the grounds of his Moroccan nationality, prohibiting him from working, despite having lived in France for 16 years. To add insult to injury, Taha has a medical certificate from a French doctor explaining the necessity of his remaining in France as he has a chronic illness for which treatment does not exist in Morocco.[xxxi]
It is for this reason that Malika states ‘Le coronavirus, c’est l’État.’ For the relatively impoverished residents of La Caravelle, Covid-19 is being exploited by the state and its’ servants, primarily through the brutality of police operations, to repress them. Whereas for Louis XIV, he was the nation (l’État, c’est moi), today the French state (ab)uses the coronavirus, by using it as a ‘veil’ to disguise its’ efforts to engage in targeted violence and discrimination, primarily against ethnic minorities.
As Assistant Professor of Sociology, Jean Beaman writes,
While everyone in France is subject to this decree, early evidence reveals it has been differentially applied. COVID-19 is not the equalizer or leveler some have suggested. Rather, this state of health emergency has disproportionately affected some populations compared to others, as some communities are more policed and surveilled than others. And these communities and populations are those that were already marginalized in France before COVID-19.[xxxii]
Plight of refugees and migrants
Similarly, it is hard to see how the almost 71 million refugees and forcibly displaced people worldwide[xxxiii] are being included as one of us, members of the ‘we’ fighting an implacable, infectious foe. As Cork-born Ettie Higgins, the UNICEF Deputy Representative in Jordan, warns previous experience has demonstrated “that a pandemic accentuates existing inequalities and makes life much more difficult for the most vulnerable.”[xxxiv]
Corralled in alarmingly overcrowded camps, the risk levels for refugees is greatly elevated for virus contraction and dispersion, not to mention the barriers, including language, they experience in accessing health services. Devoid of support, residents from many different countries in the Moria camp on Lesbos, where there are over 20,000 people living in a camp designed for less than 3,000, have come together to spread awareness of the virus to their fellow camp residents. A group of four Afghan women, one of whom had been a tailor in Kabul and who was willing to head the operation, volunteered to sew face masks for the camp’s population.
While people continue to be detained inside refugee camps in horrible conditions where there’s limited measures to prevent the spread of Covid-19, restaurants and bars will be opened this week across Greece. This discriminatory treatment is fulfilling the goal of local rightwing groups of keeping migrants out of public spaces away from public view, abandoned by the state.[xxxv]
Added to their immediate concerns regarding Covid-19, refugees are also impacted by the cessation of free movement and international travel between countries, with some countries also placing a hold on resettlement intakes.[xxxvi]
In the U.K., the sharing of patient information between healthcare services and the Home Office has resulted in highly negative health outcomes for migrants with an insecure migration status, as they have avoided going for treatment even for serious complaints such as tuberculosis, lest they be detained and/or deported.[xxxvii]
Indigenous people’s face many challenges, similar to those experienced by refugees and other vulnerable groups. As the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues highlight:
Indigenous peoples often have much in common with other neglected segments of societies, i.e. lack of political representation and participation, economic marginalization and poverty, lack of access to social services and discrimination. Despite their cultural differences, the diverse indigenous peoples share common problems also related to the protection of their rights.[xxxviii]
Making up some 6% of the world’s population, 476 million people spread over 90 countries, indigenous peoples account for about 15 percent of the extreme poor and have a life expectancy some 20 years lower than that of non-indigenous people worldwide.[xxxix] Frequently deprived of good access to health care, higher rates of poor health and lack of access to adequate sanitation facilities and other preventive measures, the advent of Covid-19 was seen as a significant threat to these communities. However, the lockdowns implemented without adequate support measures, could create greater long-term problems.
As lockdowns continue, Indigenous peoples who already face food insecurity, as a result of the loss of their traditional lands and territories, confront even graver challenges in access to food. With the loss of their traditional livelihoods, which are often land-based, many Indigenous peoples who work in traditional occupations and subsistence economies or in the informal sector will be adversely affected by the pandemic. The situation of indigenous women, who are often the main providers of food and nutrition to their families, is even graver.[xl]
Even worse, some governments are using the cover of Covid-19 to implement policies and actions that indigenous people oppose. In Canada, Kate Gunn, a lawyer at First Peoples Law Corporation wrote in early April how the Crown had still not clarified how it would safeguard the title and rights of Indigenous People’s during Covid-19. The Crown had also failed to confirm whether it would continue to make decisions which might impact on First Nation rights, a particularly critical issue given the impossibility of the First Nations to participate meaningfully in consultations during this period.[xli]
The Choctaw nation and the Irish
Although the mortality rate during the 1740-41 Irish famine is estimated to be slightly higher,[xlii] the 1840s famine is generally remembered as the greatest tragedy to have befallen the island of Ireland. Fuelled by blight devastated potato crops and an, at best, callous British administration,[xliii] one million Irish died and over a million more emigrated between 1845 and 1852 out of a population of 8.5 million.[xliv]
One of the few positive memories of this famine was the wonderful humanity demonstrated by the native American Choctaw Nation who, moved by the plight of the Irish, donated $170 in 1847.[xlv] This was a highly significant sum of money in those times, particularly when you consider that in 1831, the Choctaws had been forced to walk from their ancestral lands in the American southeast to the new Indian Territory in Oklahoma. Along this ‘trail of tears,’ many Choctaw lost their lives.[xlvi] And yet a mere 16 years later they were sufficiently moved by the suffering of a people living in a distant land to dip into their meagre resources to help alleviate the plight of the Irish.
Choctaw ‘trail of tears’
Now, over 170 years later, the Irish finally had the chance to repay this debt to some extent. In response to a fundraiser established to support the Navajo nation, badly impacted by the Covid-19 virus and the lack of suitable health facilities and equipment, many people of Irish origin contributed generously. Several of these contributors left notes drawing attention to the solidarity and humanity displayed by the native American community during the Irish famine.[xlvii]
Solidarity in India
The current pandemic has been witness to acts of heart-warming human solidarity. In India, the transgender community were seriously impacted by the sudden imposition of the Covid-19 lockdown on 24 March. Frequently dependent on daily income to survive, many struggled to survive, dependent on whatever relief was made available by the state and NGOs. Despite their precarious situation, transgender people have established support and assistance scheme for other vulnerable groups.[xlviii]
In Porur, the transgender community helped some 40 members of eleven stranded migrant, Muslim families. Originally from Andhra Pradesh, these individuals did not have identity cards and were therefore ineligible to receive relief. Keerthana, a transgender sanitary supervisor helped feed sanitation workers in Puducherry. According to Srijith Sundaram, an LGBTQ activist, the transgender community was able with the help of patrons to distribute rations and other essential items to these workers.[xlix]
Moved by the frightful conditions and suffering of migrant workers travelling on the Shramik Special trains commissioned to ferry them home, Rasheeda who lives in impoverished circumstances in New Arif Nagar slum in Bhopal, decided she had to do something to assuage their misery. Leaving her house at daybreak, Rasheeda collects materials and food to prepare packages of food. Wasif, her husband, who works in a nearby junkyard as a rag-picker, helps her collect the food, firewood and utensils to prepare these packages. The children in their colony pack the food. Upon the arrival of a train, dozens of the children rush forward with packets of food and water. Between 200 and 250 food packets and 50 litres of water are distributed daily to the grateful passengers.[l]
Rasheeda and Wasif engage in this selfless work each day even though, according to Wasif:
There are days when we get to barely eat as well, but we try hard to feed the passengers because we at least are at home. However, the lockdown has not only made them homeless but penniless too.[li]
Six kitchens are operated by their neighbours in the Blue moon colony and New Arif Nagar slums, despite the intense poverty and deprivation experienced by their inhabitants. Each kitchen prepares 20 to 25 kgs of rice daily to distribute to the passengers of two to three Shramik trains. They continue in their altruistic work, despite themselves having only received assistance of 5 kgs of flour and rice from government authorities over two months previously.[lii]
Final Remarks
I would argue that if there is one thing that Covid-19 has demonstrated conclusively, it is that we are not all in it together. At least, not in terms of our experiences, our levels of resilience and the impact the virus and state-imposed lockdown measures have had upon us. For vulnerable groups in the Global North or South, minority ethnic groups, refugees and indigenous people, the homeless or financially insecure, the negative impacts of Covid-19 and, in particular, the lockdowns, have been far more severe, resulting in serious economic stress, increased immiseration and deprivation, hunger and even death. Furthermore, as the Covid-19 infections decrease, economies reopen and people get back to work, the inequalities that pre-dated Covid-19 will still be here.
Moving forward, we need to work together to ensure the most vulnerable groups amongst us receive the support and assistance they need to address these inequities, ensure they are provided with equal access to education, health and other social goods and are able to participate fully and equitably in our society and economy.
[x] Clare Farrell, Helen McAvoy & Jane Wilde, Tackling Health Inequalities: An All-Ireland Approach to Social Determinants. 2008, Institute of Public Administration & Combat Poverty Agency: Dublin, Page 11
[xlii] S. Engler, F. Mauelshagen, J. Werner and J. Luterbacher, The Irish famine of 1740–1741: famine vulnerability and “climate migration”, Climate of the Past, 28 May 2013, page 1174
In December 1899 Honolulu-based physicians attributed two deaths to bubonic plague, and a local paper duly announced that the ‘scourge of the Orient’ had arrived.[i] Within months a first plague fatality was reported in continental U.S. as Chinese-American Chick Gin (Wing Chung Ging or Wong Chut King depending on the transliteration) succumbed to the disease in San Francisco. The cause of death was based on a classic plague symptom of swelling around the groin, but was disputed even after rudimentary bacterial analysis. Regardless, political and health authorities were already taking actions that resonate today.
Fearing the economic impact of a dreaded disease, the state governor denied the existence of plague altogether, accusing his own health officials of propagating rumours and ‘injurious opinions’ detrimental to the ‘great and healthful city.’[ii] Conversely, successive quarantines had already been imposed on San Francisco’s Chinatown, excluding non-Asian homes and businesses despite their proximity. Enforced by barbed wire and a heavy police presence, the blockade led to dwindling food supplies and a steep rise in costs. An experimental vaccine with severe side effects, developed in 1897 by bacteriologist Waldemar Haffkine, was made obligatory for any Chinese (and Japanese) wanting to leave the city.
In 1900, Honolulu’s Chinatown was set on fire to in a misdirected effort to control Bubonic plague.
Unsurprisingly, the turn-of-the-century scapegoating of East Asians in California did not occur in a vacuum. Anti-Chinese prejudice had already been formalized in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, banning their immigration for undermining the ‘dignity and wage scale of American workers.’[iii] There were, likewise, widespread perceptions of the Chinese as carriers of disease. If Europeans had been imperilled by the ‘barbaric hordes of Asia’, germs represented ‘a peaceful invasion more dangerous than a warlike attack.’[iv] And while dogma of the day suggested limited danger to the West due to advances in health and civilization, extreme measures might be necessary with plague. In such cases Russia’s ‘heroic methods’ in its Chinese colonies were helpfully referenced, as firing squads for the infected ‘saved trouble and other people’s lives.’[v]
An 1886 advertisement for ‘Magic Washer’ detergent: ‘The Chinese Must Go’.
Old Wine, New Bottle
Associating disease with marginalized groups, minorities and others has hardly been an exclusively American experience. And by today’s standards, persecution over illness is not necessarily as crude, but neither can toxic discourse or indeed violence be excluded. The arrival of a new coronavirus in December 2019 is a case in point. The linking of its presumed place of origin in Wuhan with East Asians generally, and Chinese in particular, did not take long to manifest itself as multiple accounts of discrimination emerged. In Western countries this played on traditional racial tropes such as sordid animal markets and uncleanliness. Reflecting an entirely different experience, namely apprehension over Chinese influence, regional reaction was also alarmist. Both say as much about perceptions of mainland China as of the disease itself.
There is no shortage of recent examples that demonstrate medical scapegoating around a novel or poorly understood disease. In 2010, the lynching of voodoo priests in Haiti originated with rumours of pout kolera (magic cholera powder) deliberately poisoning the water supply. The choice of target was partially reflected in the complex history of voodoo practitioners and the Haitian State. At times associated with resistance to foreign occupation, at others integrated into the personality cults of Haiti’s twentieth century dictatorships, notably that of ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier. Confusion over the origins of the cholera epidemic ‘fed on feelings of insecurity and fear’, in turn fuelling stigmatization and violence.[vi] More sustained anger eventually shifted towards the unwitting culprits, negligent United Nations peacekeepers that had contaminated the Artibonite river with cholera-infected faeces.
Vodou ceremony, Jacmel, Haiti, 2002. Image: ‘Doron’.
A corollary of medical scapegoating is fear and misinformation. Fundamental weaknesses in the Pakistani health sector, combined with accusations of a fake Hepatitis B campaign orchestrated to locate and kill Osama Bin Laden, has reinforced suspicions of polio vaccinations. With rumours of polio vaccines being either harmful or simply a front for intelligence gathering, health workers have since borne the brunt of attacks by armed groups.[vii] Misunderstandings and distortions around Ebola, both in West Africa in 2014 and more recently in the Democratic Republic of Congo have led directly to the deaths of medical staff. In the latter case, mistrust over the response is rampant, provoked in part by ‘community resentment’ over the focus on Ebola while ignoring underlying problems in the country.[viii]
The targeting of health workers as somehow responsible for bringing illness into a community, and thus the cause or at least the visible manifestation of a terrifying epidemic, is an extreme example of the need to apportion blame. But if sickness has historically been portrayed as a punishment for sin, socially excluded groups and minorities have proven most vulnerable. Whether linked to mortality or fear of the unknown, context is key to understanding the long history of how those on the margins of society have been scapegoated. Much as nineteenth century descriptions of Chinese immigrants as ‘walking time bombs of infection’ cannot be separated from pervasive Sinophobia, the frequent panic associated with novel or misunderstood illness has tended to reinforce pre-existing stereotypes.[ix]
From Tragedy to Farce
The fate of Chick Gin aside, apportioning individual responsibility for epidemics is unusual in that it is difficult to prove. ‘Typhoid Mary’ is likely the most infamous example as she came to be seen as ‘synonymous with the health menace posed by the foreign-born.’[x] An Irish immigrant cook, Mary Mallon was a so-called healthy carrier of typhoid bacteria, unintentionally instigating outbreaks amongst her wealthy employers in New York until she was eventually tracked down in 1906. Vilified in the papers as a ‘walking typhoid fever factory’ or a ‘human culture tube’,[xi] Mallon would end her days in forced isolation.
‘Typhoid’ Mary Mallon in hospital.
On a more grandiose scale, Canadian air steward Gaëtan Dugas was posthumously declared ‘Patient Zero’, accused of intentionally infecting his partners with HIV and provoking the spread of AIDS in North America.[xii] Although later disproved, the fear and exclusion of the five ‘H’s – homosexuals, heroin addicts, haemophiliacs, hookers and Haitians – remained commonplace in the 1980s.
Much like the five ‘H’s, easier to trace is the scapegoating of entire groups, the archetypal example almost certainly being the pogroms and massacres inflicted on European Jews during the Black Death. Rumours of an ‘anti-Christian international conspiracy’ fit snugly with long-standing antisemitism, particularly when mortality rates among Jews were seen as inexplicably low (the fact that sensible hygiene laws laid out in the book of Leviticus had been employed was entirely ignored). Initially directed at medieval lepers and vagrants, Jews came to be accused of poisoning wells, eventually resulting in the extermination of entire communities.[xiii] Six hundred years later hygiene control of typhus, a lice-borne pathogen, became an element of Nazi propaganda intended to justify the mass murder of human carriers during the Holocaust.[xiv]
Representation of a massacre of the Jews in 1349 Antiquitates Flandriae (Royal Library of Belgium).
The transatlantic journey of yellow fever holds particular irony in the history of racial stereotyping over disease. The mosquito-borne virus’s first documented appearance in the New World was in 1647 Barbados. Even if thoroughly misunderstood at the time, much like malaria there was an assumption that black Africans were immune to the disease, all the more so as white Europeans were so highly susceptible (in reality this was largely due to early exposure during childhood). This immunity in turn became one of the justifications on which the Atlantic slave system was built. Brutal conditions on the sugar plantations and corresponding high mortality rates ensured continued new arrivals, often with the same immunity, all the while reinforcing the original racial stereotype. It was only as slavery was gradually abolished in the nineteenth century, a period coinciding with multiple outbreaks of yellow fever in the American South, that former slaves were themselves accused of spreading the disease.[xv]
Skibbereen, west Cork, in 1847 by James Mahony.
Cholera likewise has a special place in the history of medical scapegoating and became highly politicized. Despite having long circulated locally on the Indian subcontinent, it only emerged on the global stage in the early nineteenth century, an appearance closely intertwined with colonial trade policies. As the bacteria must be ingested through contaminated water or food, the poorest and most deprived urban areas proved most vulnerable. And given the profile of its victims, the spread of cholera inevitably took on class connotations that shifted smoothly towards immigrants, even as disease transmission came to be better understood. The Irish migratory experience was strongly marked by outbreaks of cholera, with higher mortality rates used as ‘corroboration that they were carriers of the disease’ rather than a reflection of widespread discrimination and impoverishment.[xvi]
The link between poverty and disease was particularly apparent with venereal disease, more specifically syphilis (and gonorrhoea with which it was often confused). Referred to at times as the ‘secret plague’ given the strong underreporting, symptoms had been recognizable since the late fifteenth century. And while there had long been a feminized connotation as per responsibility, hence the expression ‘one night with Venus and a lifetime with Mercury’, apportioning syphilitic blame took on far more sinister connotations through the later association with underprivileged women. Various incarnations of the Contagious Diseases Act in 1860s Britain essentially allowed the arrest and forced treatment of prostitutes in an attempt to limit venereal disease in the military, and subsequently the broader population.[xvii]
The emergence of syphilis also provoked an unusual example of xenophobic scapegoating, essentially a bizarre etymological battle that took on global proportions. As the disease spread throughout Europe and beyond, rivals were duly named responsible. For the French it was the Neapolitan disease, the Italians vice versa; the Russians blamed the Poles; the Dutch turned towards the Spanish; in Japan it emerged as the ‘Chinese ulcer’; while the Turks were less discerning, simply referring to the Christian disease.[xviii] The 1918 influenza pandemic likewise went through multiple national incarnations before settling on the familiar Spanish flu, a reference to the neutral country that first reported the disease. Both examples border on the farcical and if there are lessons to be learned, at least as far as 1918 is concerned, it is rather the impact of censorship and misinformation in controlling a pandemic.[xix]
Lessons Unlearned
Being reminded of past madness has a purpose, especially as we have a nasty habit of repeating our errors. Our understandable fear of disease sadly has often revealed our basest instincts, further stigmatizing the most vulnerable and endangering the health of all. Barbaric reflexes are never far from the surface. The emergence of a new pandemic has provoked ugly reactions very much reminiscent of the past, and counterproductive to controlling both the disease and the corresponding panic. While there are no rules to the patterns of hate linked to epidemics, just as increased social cohesiveness is also a potential consequence, the choice of scapegoating targets is not random. Facile demonization of the ‘foreign’ remains a perpetual risk, and disease a convenient pretext.
As for Chick Gin, he was merely the first of many plague fatalities in 1900 San Francisco. Over the next eight years at least one-hundred-and-seventy-two others would perish, both Chinese and non-Chinese.
[ix] Quote taken from testimony to Congress in 1876 over the state of Chinese immigration, Mary Roberts Coolidge, Chinese Immigration, Arno Press: New York, 1969 (original 1909), p. 106.
[xi] ‘Woman ‘Typhoid Factory’ Held a Prisoner’, The Evening World, New York, 1 April 1907.
[xii] Charlie Campbell, Scapegoat: A History of Blaming Other People, Duckworth Overlook: London, 2011, p. 161.
[xiii] John Kelly, The Great Mortality: An intimate History of the Black Death, Harper: London, 2006, pp. 232, 248.
[xiv] Samuel K. Cohn, Pandemics: Waves of Disease, Waves of Hate from the Plague of Athens to A.I.D.S., Historical journal (Cambridge, England), 2012 November 1; 85(230): 535-555.
[xv] Sheldon Watts, Epidemics and History: Disease, Power and Imperialism, Yale University Press: London, 1999, pp. 245-246.
[xvi] Philip Alcabes, Dread: How Fear and Fantasy have Fueled Epidemics from the Black Death to Avian Flu, Public Affairs: New York, 2009, pp. 74-75, 77.
