Hundreds of people have been arrested across Asia for posting purported false coronavirus information, according to an Agence France-Presse investigation.
“It’s insane frankly. In many cases it’s people being dragged out of their homes to the lock-up, put in pre-trial detention, in crowded spaces where they’re more likely to get COVID.”
But HRW and other campaigners point to cases where opposition figures or journalists have been targeted — as well as questioning the fairness of arresting ordinary people who may not even realize they are spreading misinformation. “Regulating misinformation by either introducing new legislation or by expanding the scope of existing laws has been the trend in Asia for the last few years,” said Masato Kajimoto, a journalism researcher at the University of Hong Kong.
The Philippines also recently adopted an emergency law giving it more powers to combat the pandemic, including arresting people who share false information about the disease. Karuna Nandy, an Indian Supreme Court lawyer, told AFP that such arrests were particularly alarming in a lockdown, when courts are mostly shut.In Singapore, an anti-government website was blocked earlier this year under the city-state’s controversial and sweeping new anti-misinformation law, passed in October.
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