(TibetanReview.net, Mar05’20) – China has earned just one point out of a possible 100 from the US monitoring group Freedom House in its latest annual Global Freedom Scores report released on Mar 4. The score meant that Tibet under Chinese rule was the second-least-free country in the world in 2019, the position it has held for the past five years.
Only war-torn Syria, with a score of zero, was less free than Tibet. Even North Korea has been found to be freer than Chinese ruled Tibet.
The report, ‘Freedom in the World 2020: A Leaderless Struggle for Democracy’, has assessed 195 countries and 15 territories worldwide and found 83 countries and one territory to be ‘Free’, 63 countries and four territories to be ‘Partly Free’ and 49 countries and 10 territories, including Tibet, ‘Not Free’.
The group has assessed countries and territories on political rights and civil liberties. Chinese ruled Tibet has scored -2 out of 40 for political rights and 3 out of 60 for civil liberties, making for a total score of just 1 out of 100.
The report has found China itself one of the 15 worst-performing countries in the world, including as one of the 11 countries that Freedom House has labeled for evidence of ethnic cleansing.
The report especially cites the Chinese Communist Party’s ongoing campaign of cultural extermination in Xinjiang, combining coercive measures and technological developments that were previously applied to Tibetans, Falun Gong practitioners, and others.
The report found 2019 to be the 14th consecutive year of decline in global freedom, with even established democracies going in a downward trend.
