Human rights in the time of Covid: 'a pandemic of abuses’, says UN head

Exclusive: The biggest international crisis in generations' has rolled back years of progress and been used as a pretext to crackdown on freedoms, says Antonio Guterres

The world is facing a pandemic of human rights abuses", the UN secretary general Antonio Guterres has said.

Authoritarian regimes had imposed drastic curbs on rights and freedoms and had used the virus as a pretext to restrict free speech and stifle dissent.