The U.S.-based organization Freedom House says freedom ebbed in 72 countries around the world in 2015, while just 43 countries witnessed an increase.
By Pete Baumgartner
Last year saw a greater decline in global freedom than any other in the
past decade, according to a leading rights monitor.
The U.S.-based organization Freedom House says
freedom ebbed in 72 countries around the world in 2015, while just 43 countries
witnessed an increase.
A key finding of the report was that "fear of
social unrest" led Russia, China, and "other authoritarian regimes to
crack down harder on dissent."
Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan also received special
attention for joining a group of 10 other countries the authors regard as the
"Worst of the Worst" as far as political rights and civil liberties
are concerned.
It was the 10th straight year that Freedom House has
reported an overall decline in global freedom.
"This [year's] decline was the result of
several factors, including the ongoing conflicts in Syria, Iraq, and
Afghanistan, as well as other areas which are not only intensifying the
humanitarian crises in these countries but also generated unprecedented numbers
of refugees and fostered terrorist groups that inspired or organized
attacks," Jennifer Dunham, the director of research for the report, told
RFE/RL.
In its report, Freedom In The World 2016, released on January 27,
Freedom House said wars and other violent conflicts "fueled xenophobic
sentiment in democratic countries."
Balkan Concerns
Among other important findings in the report was
that Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, and Macedonia were deemed to have
"suffered from crippling government dysfunction in 2015" that
prevented democratic progress and assured those Balkan countries that joining
the European Union remains "a distant prospect."
The report warns that Bosnia-Herzegovina could see
even worse government paralysis if a planned referendum takes place in
Republika Srpska, the majority-Serb entity within that country, on the
legitimacy of Bosnia's national courts.
Dunham said there were "concerning declines in
governance" in the Balkans in 2015.
She cited Macedonia's ruling party being implicated
in electoral fraud and a wire-tapping scandal and nonstop battles with the
opposition that required EU intervention; the fragile and still-pending
approval of a "normalization" agreement between Serbia and Kosovo; a
"factionalized" Bosnian government that is hampered by the Republika
Srpska leadership's moves for greater autonomy; and the administration of
Montenegrin Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic's "continued harassment"
of the independent media.
Freedom House also cited Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula
-- which was forcibly annexed by Russia in 2014 -- as experiencing
"dramatic setbacks" in freedom.
Dunham said Russian authorities in Crimea continued
in 2015 to suppress dissent, including shutting down independent media and
civil-society groups, particularly those representing the Tatar community.
She added that many opponents of the Russian seizure
of Crimea have been arrested or driven into exile.
Ukraine Stymied
Dunham said that, although Ukraine "retained
the democratic gains" achieved after the 2014 ousting of President Viktor
Yanukovych, further progress was stymied in 2015 by fighting in the Donbas
region between Ukrainian troops and Russia-backed separatists, controversy over
decentralization reforms, and rivalry among the country's leading political
figures and oligarchs.
Dunham said Russia's involvement in the conflict in
Syria seemed to "deflect attention from what it was doing in Ukraine"
but that its actions in eastern Ukraine are still a big concern for Freedom
House and a major reason for its low designation for Russia.
She said the Russian government in 2015 also
expanded the role of propaganda within state-controlled media and ratcheted up
its domestic control by declaring some NGOs foreign agents, part of
"increased [government] repression on independent activism, the media, and
civil society."
Officials prepare a noose ahead of a public hanging
In Iran. Freedom House said their was a significant spike in the number of
executions carried out in the Persian Gulf country in 2015. (file photo)
Turning to Central Asia, Dunham said that, along
with Uzbekistan coming in just ahead of North Korea at the bottom of the world
rankings and Turkmenistan only two places ahead of its neighbor on the list of
the world's least-free countries, Tajikistan had a "watershed year for
getting worse."
She pointed to the Tajik government's banning of the
last remaining opposition party, the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan,
which Dunham said was a violation of the accord that ended the Tajik civil war
in 1997.
Tajikistan also clamped down further on independent
media sources and any type of public criticism of the government in 2015,
Dunham said.
She added that Tajikistan is "really moving toward the category of
Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan," which she called "very
disturbing."
Iran Executions
In Iran, Dunham said there was unfortunately a spike
in executions and the shutting down of several civil-society groups as well as
the arrest of journalists as government hard-liners seemed to be trying to
"tamp down public expectations that there would be [democratic]
openings" following the landmark nuclear deal Tehran inked with global
powers that cleared the way for increased mutual trade and diplomacy.
The Freedom House report noted that Afghanistan was
unable to hold scheduled parliamentary elections in 2015, but Dunham added that
there was "a slight improvement" in the area of government
intervention in the media under President Ashraf Ghani compared to his
predecessor, Hamid Karzai.
The Freedom House report said the situation in
Pakistan remained largely unchanged in 2015 but cited a government clampdown on
NGOs. Dunham added that there is still "some pressure from the
government" on Pakistan's media.
Bad Year For Baku
In the Caucasus, Dunham said "Azerbaijan had a
pretty bad year" that included parliamentary elections that "foreign
observer groups didn't even bother" attending because "it was pretty
clear who was going to win."
She said Azerbaijani elections were followed by
"another intense round of repression" of civil society that included
the detention of journalists and the barring of foreign journalists from
covering the European Games, which Azerbaijan hosted in 2015.
Belarus is "improving in the eyes of the
international community," Dunham said, adding that she doesn't think
"anything is actually improving" inside the country. The presidential
election "was more of the same" and was neither free nor fair, she
said.
"Moldova suffered a pretty big decline [in its
rating] this year," said Dunham, pointing to the corruption scandal
involving the disappearance of more than $1 billion from several banks and the
resulting mass demonstrations against the pro-European government.
Among countries in RFE/RL's broadcast regions,
classifications were as follows:
Not Free
Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Russia, Tajikistan,
Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan
Partly Free
Armenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Georgia, Kosovo, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Moldova,
Montenegro, Pakistan, and Ukraine.
Free
Croatia and Serbia
Among disputed territories, Georgia's breakaway
region of Abkhazia and Azerbaijan's Nagorno-Karabakh were rated by Freedom
House as Partly Free. Crimea, Kashmir, Moldova's Transdniester, and Georgia's
South Ossetia were deemed in the report to be Not Free.
Despite the global setback in freedom in 2015,
Freedom House reports that 74 percent of the 195 countries analyzed are still
considered to be Free (86 countries) or Partly Free (59 countries).
The remaining 50 countries were determined to be Not
Free.
Overall, the report concluded that, in the past 10
years, 105 countries have seen a net decline in their freedom ratings while
only 61 have experienced an improvement.
Copyright (c)
2016. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.
