Suppression of Human Rights

An increasing number of governments were suppressing political opponents and restricting the freedom of assembly, reports our State Department.

In Russia, the State Department said in its annual human rights assessment, “the government continued its crackdown on dissent that began afterVladimir Putin’s return to the presidency.”

In Iran, there has been no measurable improvement in the bleak human rights situation there since Hassan Rouhani became president in August, the State Department said, and in Egypt, human rights abuses that were prevalent under President Mohamed Morsi have continued since he was deposed by Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, now a field marshal.

The report is a sobering assessment of the prospects for the spread of democracy. “A growing number of countries are cracking down on civil society,” said Uzra Zeya, the senior State Department official who supervised the preparation of the report. “Evidence of this reality is apparent in every corner of the globe.”

Congress requires the State Department to prepare the report covering the United States’ partners as well as its enemies. The State Department’s briefing room was packed Thursday with foreign reporters and attachés from foreign embassies eager to learn what the assessment said about their countries.

In a briefing for reporters, Ms. Zeya said that 2013 was marked by “some of the most egregious atrocities in recent memory,” including the Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack in Syria that killed 1,429 people and what the State Department said were “rampant disappearances” in North Korea.

On a positive note, the report said that Myanmar had released more than 1,100 political prisoners and had allowed the International Committee of the Red Cross to visit all of its prison and labor camps. But the report noted that the government had done little to help members of an Islamic minority in Rakhine State who have been displaced by sectarian violence. Tens of thousands of them are still in camps, the State Department said.

The overall trend was not encouraging. Surveying the global situation, the report said that more than a third of the world’s people live in countries that are ruled by authoritarian governments, and that there was a widening gap between the rights that are guaranteed by international law and the “daily realities” around the world.