The Middle East Didn't Really Get Any Freer in 2011

[pokerfan]

Via Max Fisher at The Atlantic...

The societies of the Middle East and North Africa are not much freer than they were one year ago, according to the new annual report by Freedom House on global trends in freedom. The 2012 Freedom in the World report, out today, finds that political rights and civil liberties in the region were pulled back almost as much as they were advanced. It seems that, although the popular democracy movements of the Arab Spring ejected three dictators and altered the region, perhaps forever, Middle Eastern autocrats and monarchs are fighting back, nearly to a draw.



The people of the Middle East and North Africa are still the least free in the world, according to Freedom House's authoritative data. Their annual report characterizes 85 percent of Middle Easterners as "not free," 13 percent as "partly free," and only 2 percent as "free." (By comparison, 39 percent of Sub-Saharan Africans -- half the rate of the Middle East -- are considered "not free.&quot That didn't really change this year. Middle Easterners may be organizing, protesting, fighting, and often dying for freedom, but they have by and large still not gotten it.

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/01/the-middle-east-didnt-really-get-any-freer-in-2011/251653/

[tabatha]

1. They are putting their lives on the line for their human rights.

But, it is not going to be easy with the Salafis trying to change that in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia.

In Syria, the opposition have stated that they will not go back to Assad's rule. They will fight to the end.

"it's my contention that the roots of Arab problems are not civilisational, economic, philosophical, or theological per se, even if religion, development, and culture have had great influence on the Arab reality. The origins of the miserable Arab reality are political par excellence. Like capital to capitalism, or individualism to liberalism, the use and misuse of political power has been the factor that defines the contemporary Arab state. Arab regimes have subjugated or transformed all facets of Arab society.

Since gaining liberation from Western colonialism, the Arab world has been ruled mostly but not entirely by regimes whose practice has been antithetical to any sense human progress, unity, democracy, and human rights. Those who tried, albeit selectively to chart a better way forward on the basis of national security and national interest, were dissuaded through pressure, boycotted, or defeated on the battlefield. The political backwardness of the larger postcolonial transformation soon became the plague that infected everything else. The guardians of the state who were entrusted with the welfare of their nations monopolised power, controlled the economy, and ignored the civil liberties of the majority in order to privilege the few.

That is why twenty-first-century Arab revolutionaries need to go beyond changing leadership and actually reinvent state structures if they want to transform Arab society."

http://blogs.aljazeera.com/imperium/2012/01/10/excerpts-invisible-arab

I have both admiration and huge sympathy for what they are going through. And it sickens me to see some people in the relatively free west debase these attempts to lift themselves out of subjugation no matter the bloodshed, torture and horror they have to endure.

[Arctic Dave]

2. Neither did the US.

Kind of a difficult word to pin down.

What does "freedom" mean to you?


http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/freedom

[pokerfan]

3. link to the full report

here:

A total of 26 countries registered net declines in 2011, and only 12 showed overall improvement, marking the sixth consecutive year in which countries with declines outnumbered those with improvements. While the Middle East and North Africa experienced the most significant gains—concentrated largely in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya—it also suffered the most declines, with a list of worsening countries that includes Bahrain, Iran, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Syria and Saudi Arabia, two countries at the forefront of the violent reaction to the Arab Spring, fell from already low positions to the survey’s worst-possible ratings.

http://www.freedomhouse.org/article/freedom-world-2012-arab-uprisings-and-their-global-repercussions

[xchrom]

4. du rec. nt

[pampango]

5. Never underestimate the desperation of a threatened dictator. From the Freedom House report:

Tunisia rose from among the worst-performing Middle Eastern countries to achieve Partly Free status and a place on the list of electoral democracies. While Egypt and Libya remained Not Free, with the latter still far behind the former, both countries saw major improvements in 2011. Declines were noted in Bahrain, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen, most of which stemmed from the backlash against the year’s uprisings. Israel, the only Free country in the region, also suffered a decline due to a series of laws and policies that posed threats to freedom of expression and civil society.

Worst of the Worst: Of the 48 countries designated as Not Free, nine have been given the survey’s lowest possible rating of 7 for both political rights and civil liberties: Eritrea, Equatorial Guinea, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Two territories, Tibet and Western Sahara, were also ranked among the worst of the worst.

An additional 7 countries and 1 territory received scores that were slightly above those of the worst-ranked countries, with ratings of 6,7 or 7,6 for political rights and civil liberties: Belarus, Burma, Chad, China, Cuba, Laos, Libya, and South Ossetia.

http://www.freedomhouse.org/article/freedom-world-2012-arab-uprisings-and-their-global-repercussions