“Sind” instead of “wird”?

Yesterday, I was reading a news article and saw this sentence

“In manchen Ländern wird die Opposition aber unterdrückt und daran gehindert, ihre Arbeit zu Machen”

Is it possible to use “sind” instead of “wird” in this sentence? If not, why?
 

I don't think there is a grammatical reason not to substitute ist (not sind) for wird, but it would change the meaning and maybe sound a bit odd.
Ist is present tense of sein "to be" i.e at this moment in time.
Wird is present tense of werden "to become" so you would get more of a sense of the opposition becoming suppressed over a period of time.

 Perhaps Liss can help with this.
 

Hallo RexV und sfpugh!

sfpugh is right here - substituting sein "to be" for werden "to become" changes the meaning of the sentence. So it would go from "the opposition is becoming" to "the opposition is being."

Grammatically speaking, both verbs fit just fine; however, as sfpugh says, it would be ist and not sind, since Opposition is singular.

Tschüss!

Liss