Following a brief rise on Freedom House’s rankings some years ago, the Russian Federation dropped for the third year running and can now be found below both Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East on many of the survey’s key indicators. What makes it worse is that worse is that these regons has the situation improved. On the contrary, Freedom’ House’s ranking shows that while the overall situation has remained stagnant in the Middle East, it has actually deteriorated quite significantly in Sub-Sahaan Africa as a whole. It is just that it has dropped even more radically in the Russian Federation.
Momentary progress followed by massive decline
After the collapse of the former Soviet Union, the resurgent the Russian Federation saw a significant increase in political freedoms. During that period, Freedom House ranked Russia as a "partially free" country, making definite progress in the fields of civil rights and independence of the media, largely respecting the freedoms of assembly and demonstrations and even observing the right to conduct discussions in public. At the same time, however, it was obvious that the Russian Federation still had problems with the electoral process, some political rights and the rule of law.
-What does the President want? Look no further than the courts
Commenting on the Freedom House’s recent findings, Arch Puddington, Director of the Research Department of "Freedom House", said that "the moment Vladimir Putin became the president everybody could notice a significant decline of freedom everywhere: the elections were turned into a show, opposition parties were persecuted, corruption was getting worse". The state extended its control over both print and broadcast media. Only a few exceptional outlets and the Internet remained open for political discussion. At the same time, Russia’s NGOs began to face intense pressure from the state. Russia’s courts became subject to political manipulation and can now be counted on to deliver the decisions needed by the authorities.
-Russia does not have a democratic political system
-Until now the Russian Federation does not have a democratic political system, continued Puddington. -Instead, there is a facade of democracy, with a Constitution, formal elections, political parties, and other attributes typically found in democracies. However, without public accountability,free media, and independent courts, the incumbent leadership can manipulate the entire structure at will. Such a system may be able to stay in power for decades, but ultimately it will lose touch with society and become unstable. Puddington also warned that ‘in an aggressive manner, Russia has restricted civil rights and taken significant steps towards further intimidation of democratic forces also in neighboring territories. Experts from "Freedom House" are convinced that the increase of authoritarianism in the Russian Federation is connected with the rise in prices for energy resources and that the oil price collapse may have unpredictable effects of relevance also from a human rights perspective. This opinion is shared by the majority of Russian human rights specialists.
Freedom House’s press release
