Erin O’Brien /
PEN America /
New York, NY /
As my work with PEN America has continued and as the COVID-19 pandemic has continued to ravage the world, one thing has become increasingly clear: the pandemic, like most afflictions and systems, operates on the systems and hierarchies already in place in our world. This is demonstrated in manifold ways: in the racial disparity of the disease’s deadly effects (acting on racist and white supremacist global systems), in the countries where it has been deadliest (acting on authoritarian systems), and, for my work, in the authoritarian tendencies it has strengthened (silencing dissent and being used as a means of cementing fascist and authoritarian rule).
COVID-19 has become a central means of silencing and attacking dissidents around the world. In China, those who have spoken out against the government’s handling of the virus have been arrested or have disappeared. In Iran, political prisoners such as Nasrin Sotoudeh are being kept in dire crowded conditions and are refused medical care despite the disease’s spread. In Turkey, protests in the capital city, Ankara, have been banned for alleged fear of the virus spreading, but bars and restaurants remain open. Around the world, political prisoners’ court dates and hearings are being indefinitely postponed due to the virus, and writers and activists remain indefinitely behind bars.
It has been fascinating (and terrifying) to watch this play out through my work at PEN. What is supposed to be a “great equalizer”–a disease–has in fact solidified the corrupted systems that were already present in the world. Non-biological characteristics such as party affiliation, chosen career, activist position, and religious affiliation have had distinctly deterministic and biological effects. For example, in Iran, if you are an imprisoned dissident or a human rights activist, your chance of dying from the coronavirus skyrockets. Or, if you are imprisoned for a petty crime in the U.S., you’ve got a more than 20% chance of getting sick.
I’m still grappling with and processing all of this. It’s certainly discouraging and disheartening, to say the least, that the corrupt systems controlling the world can be strengthened and upheld by the most non-political thing of all: a disease. But I think it has also made me reflect and realize that nothing is free of racism, or fascism, or corruption. It has made me interrogate the many aspects of all of our lives that can be affected by these hierarchies and systems, and has made me aware that even the most seemingly innocuous things can support corrupt systems.