Its Official Worst Of The Worst Human Rights Abusers Revealed

Freedom House, a New Yorkbased, non-profit NGO, has been monitoring threats to human rights from as farback as 1980. Its 2009 annual report discloses that at the commencement of2009, 54% of the world’s population is still forced to live under brutalauthoritarian rule.

·       89(46%) of the world’s 193 countries are rated as Free, where the people have thefreedom of a wide assortment of political and human liberties.

·       62(32%) live in only Partly Free countries, where the rule of law weakly enforced

·       42(22%) of the world’s countries are graded as Not Free with the people livingwith only basic human rights and political freedom is absolutely unknown.

Eight countries out of the42 countries rated as Not Free, were delegated the Worst of the Worst possiblerating. These countries included: Burma, Equatorial Guinea, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. The list also included the two territories, Chechnya and Tibet.

The next level ofcountries were: Belarus, Chad, China, Cuba, Eritrea, Laos, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Zimbabwe, besides the two territories of South Ossetia (Georgia) and Western Sahara (Morocco). In these countries private discussion is firmlydiscouraged, while political challengers are ruthlessly tyrannized. Anycriticism of the government is monitored and punishment meted out. The people’slives are fully controlled by the government and totally invasive, withconstant fear of official reprisal for self-governing thoughts, or actions.

The countries committinghuman rights abuse, reach across the Americas, the Middle East, Central Asia, Africa and East Asia. Theyembrace a large range of cultures and several levels of economic growth.Countries such as Zimbabwe have crumbled from being one of Africa’s most affluent nations, to becoming one of its poorest, ravaged bydisease, starvation and the world’s highest level of inflation.

During the last 30 yearsthere has been a momentous increase of human freedom. Many autocratic leadershave found themselves on trial in international courts, while many are still inthe process. Many states have discarded their tyrannical ways and opted fordemocracy, giving deference to fundamental civil freedom. There is anincreasing global backing for the:

·       values of democracy

·       rule of law

·       freedom of association

·        freedom of speech,

·       rights of the minorities

      ·     plusnumerous other world-wide recognized basic human rights.

Several of the nationsthat have been able to gain measured and sustainable progress in long-termeconomic growth, also esteem the practices of democracy.

Jennifer Windsor,Executive Director of Freedom House however says “Although democracy has scoredimpressive gains in recent times, we have also begun to experience a new driveto prevent the further spread of democracy and where possible, roll back someof the achievements that have already been registered.” This entails doing awaywith independent media, marginalizing political opponents, thwartingindependent think tanks and stopping NGOs from getting important resources.

On top of all that, manyof the worst human rights law-breakers have become a member of loose coalitionsbelonging to the United Nations, in order to turn aside the world’s eyes fromtheir history of tyranny.