False narratives about the coronavirus have been weaponized to target stateless minorities around the world, according to a consortium of NGOs and citizenship rights activists. A new report, published by the Covid-19 Emergency Statelessness Fund Consortium, highlights how they have been scapegoated, attacked and characterized as vectors of infection, despite there being no evidence for such claims. 

“It’s straight out of the authoritarian playbook,” said Amal de Chickera, co-director of the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion and an author of the document. “Where governments have failed to protect their citizens, they have tried to pin the blame on minority communities.”

De Chickera outlined how Rohingya Muslim settlements in India have been attacked by Islamophobic mobs, spurred on by the belief that refugees were responsible for rising infection rates. 

“These people were seen as other, and therefore it was easier to be fearful of contracting the virus off them,” he said.