Freedom in retreat around the world, says report

Freedom House has demoted India from "free" to "partly free", and flagged the sustained erosion of civil liberties in the country.

A large-scale pro-democracy demonstration in Hong Kong on Jan. 1, 2020. (The New York Times: Lam Yik Fei, File)

Authoritarian actors grew bolder during 2020 as major democracies turned inward, contributing to a 15th consecutive year of decline in global freedom, the flagship annual report of Freedom House said on Wednesday.

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Published since 1973, ‘Freedom in the World’ assesses the condition of political rights and civil liberties around the world.

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“Democracy and pluralism are under assault,” the report’s author, Sarah Repucci, has written. “The unchecked brutality of autocratic regimes and the ethical decay of democratic powers are combining to make the world increasingly hostile to fresh demands for better governance.”

The latest report noted that “the countries experiencing deterioration outnumbered those with improvements by the largest margin recorded since the negative trend began in 2006”.

Source: Freedom House

Freedom House has demoted India from “free” to “partly free”, and flagged the sustained erosion of civil liberties in the country.

In many countries, promise belied: report

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