(TibetanReview.net, Feb02’16) – Tibet ranked among the worst for political rights and civil liberties, with the worst freedom rating of seven and an aggregate score of just one out of 100, in 2015, according to US human rights NGO Freedom House Jan 27. The group’s latest annual Freedom in the World report, titled as ‘Anxious Dictators, Wavering Democracies: Global Freedom under Pressure’, called China a “a role model, in the developing world and beyond, for combining political repression and economic growth, at the cost of human rights.”
Tibet shared the worst civil and political rights ranking with Syria, Somalia, North Korea, Uzbekistan, Eritrea, Turkmenistan, Western Sahara, Central African Republic, Sudan, Equatorial Guinea and Saudi Arabia. But only war-torn Syria, at minus I, was worse off than Tibet.
The report labeled China itself as ‘not free’, with an overall freedom rating of six, with seven being the absolute worst, and an aggregate score of 16, with 100 being the best. The aggregate score is calculated by adding scores, from a possible one to four, from a total of 25 indicators.
The report also indicted China for its overall minority policy. “The government (China) continues to pursue policies, including large-scale resettlement and work-transfer programs, that are designed in part to alter the demography of ethnic minority regions, especially Tibet, Inner Mongolia, and the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region,” the report said.
The report said that China’s “modest reform measures in 2015—such as incremental judicial changes, relaxation of household registration rules, and a shift to a two-child policy—were more than offset by harsh campaigns against dissent and a renewed emphasis on the Communist Party’s leadership in political, social, and economic life.”
Freedom House also said that 2015 marked the tenth year of a continuous decline in freedom around the world, noting that 72 of the 195 countries it examined fell in the freedom rankings in 2015 – the most in the last decade.