Human Rights

Documents & Texts from America.gov

24 January 2008
Autocratic Powers Partly To Blame for Decline in Global Freedom

By Stephen Kaufman
Staff Writer

Washington -- In its annual report on the status of freedom around the world, the Freedom House organization noted that, for the first time in 15 years, the level of global freedom has decreased for two consecutive years. In explaining the causes of this decline, the organization criticized the role that countries such as Russia, China, Iran and Venezuela are playing in undermining pro-democracy movements in neighboring countries.

As a prime example, the year 2007 saw the brutal suppression by the Burmese military government of the peaceful pro-democracy movement led by the country’s Buddhist monks. Freedom House’s Southeast Asia analyst Camille Eiss told reporters in Washington January 16 that the result of the government’s action led to several hundred deaths and between 3,000 and 6,000 arrests.

The suppression, she said, showed that Burma, already “one of the worst performers worldwide,” had declined even further.

“With all eyes on Burma, the world also turned to China for its tremendous influence over the military junta and its largest trading partner, and also in the region more broadly as a model of persistent political repression,” Eiss said.

The annual report says China’s role in Burma, as the provider of diplomatic and economic support, has been “particularly negative.” The country also plays a negative role in North Korea through its forceful repatriation of those who have fled the Pyongyang regime and in Africa, where the country “provides various kinds of aid, including security assistance, to authoritarian countries and undermines the efforts of the United States, the European Union, and multilateral institutions to promote honest and transparent governance,” the report says.

In addition to describing China as “an impediment” to the spread of democracy in East Asia and Africa, the report also cites Russia, Iran and Venezuela as “powerful autocracies” having a “negative impact … on smaller, less powerful neighboring countries.” This development is described as a “particularly worrying phenomenon” in the 2007 report.

“Pragmatic, market-oriented or energy-rich dictatorships … are trying to harness the power of the marketplace while maintaining closed political systems,” the report says, obtaining their powerful economic influence through petroleum or capital from long-term trade surpluses.

“These autocracies are unapologetic and increasingly assertive, at home and abroad, in declaring that the paradigm of rights-based governance as the international community has long understood it is not relevant for the 21st century,” the report says.

Arch Puddington, director of research at Freedom House told reporters that the Freedom House findings came within the context of a year “marked by a notable setback for global freedom.” He noted that, for the first time in 15 years, the survey reported two years of decline in global freedom in a row, with only 10 countries showing improvement versus 38 countries – one-fifth of the world’s total -- where freedom has declined.

Along with the negative role played by powerful autocracies, Puddington ascribed the global decline to issues such as corruption and its corrosive role in eroding faith in democracy, as well as problems instituting the rule of law.

However, Puddington also noted that, in the much longer term, the world has seen a “steady progress of freedom” based upon the accumulated data from the past 30 years. In 1977, Freedom House classified only 28 percent of the world’s countries as being free. The number rose to 35 percent in 1987 and 42 percent in 1997, and stood at 47 percent at the end of 2007.

He concluded that “the condition of freedom in the world is as good as it’s ever been,” when considering the longer term trends.

The full text of the most recent Freedom House report is available on the organization’s Web site.

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