BANGKOK – Democratic governments around the world need to do more to take authoritarian regimes to task after 2024 saw an unwillingness to cooperate to resolve crises such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the Myanmar military’s arrest and killing of democracy campaigners, Human Rights Watch said on Thursday.
Repressive regimes imprisoned their opponents; conflicts led to spiraling civilian deaths, homelessness and hunger; and authoritarian regimes gained ground in the more than 70 elections last year, the group said in its World Report 2025.
“Governments that are outspoken about protecting human rights, but ignore the abuses of their allies, open the door to those who question the legitimacy of the human rights system,” Executive Director Tirana Hassan said.
“That view irresponsibly and dangerously lets abusive governments off the hook. This isn’t a moment to retreat.”
Hassan also said that liberal democracies were not always reliable champions of human rights at home or abroad.
“U.S. President Joe Biden’s foreign policy has demonstrated a double standard when it comes to human rights, as it continues to provide weapons to Israel despite widespread violations of international law in Gaza while condemning Russia for similar violations in Ukraine,” she said.
“In Europe, economic stagnation and security have been used as a pretext by a growing number of countries to justify their selective jettisoning of rights, especially of marginalized groups and migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees.”
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Hassan called for greater support for the work of the United Nations in identifying the erosion of basic rights and the International Criminal Court in seeking to prosecute perpetrators.
New York-based Human Rights Watch, or HRW, examined the record of more than 100 countries in its report.
Silencing dissent
China’s authoritarian leadership relentlessly restricted freedoms and stifled dissent, the group said.
“Under President Xi Jinping, China continued its relentless campaign of repression to enforce loyalty to the one-party state, silence any form of dissent – including within the Chinese Communist Party itself – and stifle any attempts to foster an independent civil society, support an independent judiciary, or protect the rights of ethnic minorities and other minority groups,” Hassan said.
HRW pointed to Hong Kong’s imprisonment of democracy activists under a China-imposed national security law, and China’s surveillance, imprisonment and abuse of hundreds of thousands of mostly Muslim ethnic Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region.
Gagging opposition
In Cambodia, HRW said Prime Minister Hun Manet’s government “has tightened restrictions on fundamental freedoms, intensified persecution of dissidents, and increased criminal penalties for peaceful dissent,” while his father, former prime minister Hun Sen, pulled the political strings and threatened government critics.
Since May, at least 11 opposition party members have been charged, convicted or had their convictions upheld on politically motivated grounds, HRW said.
Eroded rights
Vietnam’s government abused the legal system to restrict basic freedoms of expression, association, peaceful assembly, movement and religion, the group said.
“Party-controlled courts sentenced online free speech advocates and civil society activists to long prison sentences on bogus charges such as ‘propaganda’ or ‘infringing on the interests’ of the state,” HRW said, adding that at least 39 campaigners were convicted and jailed for longer terms last year. They included human rights defenders Nguyen Chi Tuyen, Nguyen Vu Binh and Phan Van Bach, and environmental activist Ngo Thi To Nhien.
War crimes
In Myanmar, where the junta has been fighting ethnic minority and pro-democracy insurgents since a coup four years ago, the military had ramped up its scorched earth tactics to counter the growing resistance and it forcibly conscripted citizens as troop casualties rose, HRW said.
“The military’s atrocities committed since the February 2021 coup amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, fueled by decades of impunity,” the group said, adding that members of the persecuted, mainly Muslim Rohingya community were “facing the gravest threats since the military’s 2017 atrocities.”
Rohingya have been caught up in the war between insurgents and the military in Rakhine state seven years after more than 740,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh from a military crackdown.
North Korea
HRW said North Korea remained one of the most repressive countries in the world.
“Under totalitarian leader Kim Jong Un, North Korea maintains fearful obedience through arbitrary punishments, torture, executions, unjust imprisonment, and forced labor,” it said.
“Sexual and domestic violence against women and girls is widespread and normalized. Basic freedoms, including expression, assembly, and access to information, are severely restricted.”
North Koreans were prevented from tapping most sources of income for three years during the COVID-19 epidemic, HRW reported in March. It said women, normally main breadwinners, were hit particularly hard by the restrictions which undermined their right to food and health.
Pushing back
While many authoritarian leaders had tightened their grip, often by leveraging fear and misinformation, there were glimmers of democratic resilience, Hassan said. She pointed to Bangladesh where student-led protests led to the resignation of a repressive leader and South Korea, where the public refused to accept martial law.
Hassan said governments had to support those who stood up to oppression.
“The year has shown the resilience of those who dare to resist oppression and the power of courage to deliver progress, even in the darkest times,” said Hassan.
“The task before us is clear: governments have a responsibility to push back against efforts to roll back international human rights law and norms.
“They need to defend space for free expression and peaceful assembly; to reinforce the architecture and effectiveness of accountability and to bring rights abusers to justice, no matter how powerful; and to amplify the voices of those who have been silenced.”
Edited by RFA Staff.