WASHINGTON: A global ‘crusade for freedom” is on the march, but it still hasn’t penetrated into many dark comers ‘of the world where dictators of left and right rule, says a specialist who is marking its progress.
Raymond Gastil of Freedom House in New York calculates that 56 countries were fully free in 1985, an increase of three from a year earlier. It’s an all-time high, but it still represents only a third of the nations of the world.
He said 56 other countries are partly free and 55 are classified as not free. Gastil said 38 percent of the world’s population lives in fully free countries, 23 percent in partly free nations and the remainder live in countries where there is no freedom.
Gastil is author of the annual “Freedom in the World” study. Although freedom House is a nongovernmental independent research organization, its rating of nations is highly regarded at the State Department, which attempts no complication of its own.
In an interview, Gastil said there has been renewed interest in democracy in the world, but cautioned against becoming “over conscious of the changes.” He said there have also been setbacks, particularly in Africa, which he called “a disaster area” for democracy.
The biggest gains have been in the Western Hemisphere where eight nations have become fully free in six years, including three in 1985 — Brazil, Uruguay and Grenada, The others are Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Honduras and Ecuador.
Gastil cited Spain, Portugal and Greece as major recent successes in Europe.
Gastil’s list of free countries includes most of the Western Hemisphere, Western and southern Europe, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, India (for Hindus only) and Israel and a host of island nations. ‘Only two African countries are classified as fully free, Botswana and Mauritius. The only Middle East nation is Israel and it gets a prtly free rating in this administration of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Partly free countries are an odd mixture that includes South Africa, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Hungary, Chile, Egypt, Iran, Kenya, Uganda, Turkey, Taiwan, Pakistan, Lebanon, South Korea, Yugoslavia, Zimbabwe, Bangladesh and Thailand.
Not free countries include the Soviet Union, China and most of the Eastern Europe, North Korea, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Ghana, Iraq, Ethiopia, Angola, Algeria, Syria, Vietnam, Tanzania and Zaira.
Gastil’s classification measures ‘a nation’s performance against a Jong list of political rights and civil liberties. Political rights include such criteria as whether elections are fair and whether a government is free of military or foreign control.
‘Among civil liberties are the degrees of press freedom, freedom from political terror or imprisonment, freedom of speech and religious institutions and freedom from corruption and from “gross socio-economic inequality.”
In the very worst countries, he said, “The political despots at the top appear by their actions to feel little constraint from either public opinion or popular tradition”.
The practice of political terror ism doesn’t mean a country lacks some freedoms. Chile, Lebanon and Guatemala all have had large scale political terrorism, but still get a better rating than Czechoslovakia which does not.
Article extracted from this publication >> July 25, 1986
