Sawt Falasteen - Rights decline but bright spots in South Asia: Freedom House

The Washington-based pro-democracy research group elevated two countries to the status of "free" -- Senegal, where the opposition triumphed after the outgoing president's attempt to delay elections was defeated, and Bhutan, the Himalayan kingdom which consolidated a transition to democracy with competitive polls.

Tiny Bhutan gained the distinction of being the only South Asian country classified as free. But others in the region made strong gains in the index without changing categories -- Bangladesh, where iron-fisted leader Sheikh Hasina fled in the face of a revolt, and Sri Lanka, where Anura Kumara Dissanayake was elected president on an anti-corruption platform after breaking the stranglehold of the two long-dominant parties.

The largest score improvement in the index, which tracks both countries and territories, was in Indian-administered Kashmir, which held elections for the first time since the Hindu nationalist government in New Delhi revoked the Muslim-majority region's special status in 2019.

But Freedom House said India as a whole saw further deterioration as it pointed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's efforts to gain influence over judicial appointments. The group downgraded the world's largest democracy from "free" to "partly free" in 2021.

Yana Gorokhovskaia, the co-author of the report, said it was the 19th consecutive year that freedom fell on a global level, but that 2024 was especially volatile due to the high number of elections.

"The big picture is that this was another year of the same trajectory of a global decline in freedom but because of all the elections, it was more dynamic than previous years," she said.

She said that both Bangladesh and Syria, where Islamist-led fighters toppled longtime strongman Bashar al-Assad in December, saw immediate improvements in civil liberties -- but that it would be a longer road to see gains in political representation.

Political rights largely "depend on institutions. And those are easy to destroy but very hard to build up," she said.

- Four countries become 'not free' -

A rare bright spot in the Middle East was Jordan, which was upgraded from "not free" to "partly free." Freedom House pointed to reforms that allowed more competitive elections in the kingdom.

On the other hand, four countries were downgraded from "partly free" to "not free" -- Kuwait, Niger, Tanzania and Thailand.

Thailand -- which has repeatedly shifted in the Freedom House categories -- saw a court disband the party which won the most votes in elections and then dismiss the prime minister from the second-ranking party after an ethics complaint by senators backed by the powerful military.

Kuwait's emir disbanded parliament after elections, while in Tanzania, Freedom House pointed to a crackdown on protesters under President Samia Suluhu Hassan.

Niger came under full grip of the military after a 2023 coup ousted elected president Mohamed Bazoum.

Tunisia, El Salvador and Haiti also saw steep declines. The only country given a perfect 100 score on freedom was Finland, with New Zealand, Norway and Sweden all right behind at 99.

Freedom House, founded in 1941 with bipartisan US support, receives US government funding but is independently administered. The non-profit group has planned layoffs after President Donald Trump froze money aimed at democracy promotion.

H.Nasr--SF-PST