PARIS (AP) – Agnes Callamard is best known for her investigation into the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and has made a career out of extrajudicial killings.
The French human rights expert’s focus on human rights abuses takes on new dimensions as she takes on the leadership of Amnesty International and turns her attention to what she says is one of the world’s most pressing issues: equity the vaccine to end the coronavirus pandemic, which has eroded freedoms globally.
Amnesty International published its annual report on Wednesday, arguing that governments have used the coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to curb human rights, regardless of whether that was the original intention. The powerful report specifically targeted the governments of Myanmar and Russia, among others, but also criticized the use of coronavirus-related police powers in places like Britain and the United States against protesters.
The only way to end the virus and the abuses that have accompanied it, mainly against the most vulnerable in the world, is to distribute vaccines globally and equitably, he told The Associated Press on Tuesday.
“What we found is that the victims of COVID, whether in the UK, France, the US, India, the Middle East, Brazil, those victims were mainly among the most unauthorized and vulnerable groups.” he said. dit. “As a global community, as a national community, we have failed the test that COVID-19 represented.”
Callamard seldom hesitates to call the powerful. In 2019, as the UN special rapporteur, he concluded that there was “credible evidence” that Khashoggi’s assassination was sanctioned by the state. He also investigated the U.S. drone strike that killed Iranian General Qasem Soleimani and concluded that it was illegal. Earlier this week, he said there was one real risk that Russia he subjected opposition leader Alexei Navalny to “a slow death.”
He said he would stop conducting his own investigations, as he has done for years for the United Nations, but will continue to claim human rights violations as he sees them. And the pandemic exposed a lot. At the end, he said, he will expose even more, especially among rich and powerful nations that have bought more vaccines than they need.
“Not only do we buy everything, but we also prevent others from producing it. In the name of what? In the name of profit and in the name of greed, “Callamard said, referring to the European Union and U.S. decision to block a proposal to relax intellectual property restrictions on treatment-related patents and coronavirus vaccines.
One of his proposals coincides with the same call by the Biden administration this week for a global corporate income tax. In a prologue to the Amnesty report she wrote ahead of Monday’s announcement by U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Callamard said the global tax system had produced more losers than winners.
“Global taxation is a way to rebalance equality,” he said. “It’s a way to make sure you don’t always ask those who have less to give more.”
___
Follow all AP pandemic coverage at:
https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic
https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-vaccine
https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak