DUSHANBE, January 17, 2013, Asia-Plus — The latest edition of “Freedom in the World,” the annual report compiled by U.S.-based rights watchdog Freedom House, has listed Tajikistan among “Not Free” societies.
The Freedom House report evaluates the civil rights and political liberties of 195 countries during 2012.
The findings for Freedom in the World 2013, which were released this week, reflect a complex picture for the state of global freedom.
While the number of countries ranked as Free for 2012 was 90, a gain of 3 over the previous year, 27 countries showed significant declines, compared with 16 that showed notable gains. This is the seventh consecutive year that Freedom in the World has shown more declines than gains worldwide. Furthermore, the report data reflected a stepped-up campaign of persecution by dictators that specifically targeted civil society organizations and independent media.
On the Central and Eastern Europe/Eurasia region, the report notes that Eurasia (consisting of the countries of the former Soviet Union minus the Baltic states) now rivals the Middle East as one of the most repressive areas on the globe. “Indeed, Eurasia is in many respects the world’s least free subregion, given the entrenchment of autocrats in most of its 12 countries.”
According to the report, improvements were seen in Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Georgia, as well as in the disputed territories of Abkhazia and Nagorno-Karabakh, the latter of which moved from Not Free to Partly Free. Meanwhile, Kazakhstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Ukraine all had notable declines.
Tajikistan”s civil liberties rating reportedly declined in the wake of last summer”s military operation in the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region (GBAO), which was accompanied by extrajudicial killings and media repression.
Both Tajikistan and Kazakhstan fared only slightly better than Belarus, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan, whose abysmal rights records kept them at the very bottom of Freedom House”s list, alongside Syria, Somalia, and North Korea.
Overall, 43 percent of the global population was found to live in “Free” societies and 23 percent in “Partly free” societies. Thirty-four percent of the world”s people live in countries rated “Not Free.”
Freedom House is an independent watchdog organization that supports democratic change, monitors the status of freedom around the world, and advocates for democracy and human rights.
