Statement on the case of Uruguay regarding security policies in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic
The political and ideological reorganization in the region, in the context of the advancing Covid-19 pandemic, seriously deepens our concerns about public safety. The new context we face is intensifying the punitive capacities of Latin American states. The need to contain the pandemic allows governments to take extremely dangerous measures for the population—both through disrespect for fundamental rights and through negligence or denial.
State responses to the pandemic are of varying nature and with difficulties that are largely due to the reduction of public goods and services, especially in the areas of health and education.
We cannot ignore the fact that citizens are facing the pandemic in a context of data overload and information overload, of fake news, post-truth… which makes it difficult to process, analyze, and disseminate information. It wouldn't be the first time we've encountered governments and authorities using various strategies to conceal, misinform (inflate or deflate the situation), and trivialize extremely serious situations. The media and social networks have collaborated and continue to collaborate in this. They are complicit in the mission of misinforming, whether through their silence or their loud voices, about unavoidable truths that are now emerging with a powerful explosion.
Added to this context is the beginning of a global economic paralysis which, while it may affect large and powerful economic groups that control vast international resources, will also have devastating consequences for the employed population in the formal sector and, especially, the informal market. Nor can we ignore that the isolation and quarantine measures, which are being imposed more strictly every day, are leaving behind the homeless, those living in precarious housing, those who rely on community kitchens for food, and the long list of other vulnerabilities that exist in our country.
In this context, in Uruguay, the new government, which took office on March 1st, maintains its intention to pass a Law of Urgent Consideration (LUC) with 94 articles (out of 457) dedicated to public safety. A comprehensive reading of the LUC makes it clear that, for the new government, there are no structural conditions rooted in capitalism that explain the causes of crime. The LUC is a strategy of “hyper-intimidating” the citizenry through an inflation of punitive threats. It is an approach that overemphasizes the deterrent capacity of punishment, arrest, and firepower.
The LUC is an unconstitutional bill, according to experts. It proposes harsher penalties for various crimes, for both adults and adolescents. It proposes longer periods of incarceration in dilapidated prisons. This is combined with expanding the right to use firearms to the general public, retired police officers (granting them the same legal powers as active-duty officers), and security forces. It proposes protecting firearm owners with the presumption of innocence and broadening the scope of objective and, surprisingly, subjective self-defense. This is further supported by expanding police powers for identity checks, searches, arrests, and investigations of "apparently criminal" acts without the obligation to inform the Public Prosecutor's Office during the first four hours.
However, the discretionary “bombshell” of the LUC is already in motion. The National Human Rights Institution and Ombudsman's Office received 22 complaints of alleged police excesses in the first eleven days of the new government. These complaints relate to new police operations, also of a constitutional nature, involving the “request” for identification documents and the restriction of free movement without any evidence or suspicion of crimes. Police action has been reinforced in the context of Covid-19, as the police have taken to patrolling the streets, “urging” the population to avoid gatherings.
In short, we face a worrying situation that could lead to increased criminalization of vulnerable sectors in the context of a virus that apparently affects—especially in Latin America and at its onset—mostly the middle and upper classes. The working group understands that these “tough on crime” policies are being suffered by sectors of the population who will have ample reason to mobilize and express their discontent with the new paths being taken by repression and economic paralysis. Therefore, we issue a warning, a call to vigilance to prevent the pandemic from becoming an ideal scenario for intensified punitivism and the deepening of inequalities.
March 2020
CLACSO Working Group
Violence, security policies and resistance
