The freedom index presented annually by Freedom House shows a global decline in freedom. The number of countries deemed to be “Not Free” in the study increased to 47, or 24 percent of the total number of countries. Among them is Russia and all the former Soviet states with the exception of the three Baltic states which are categorized as “Free” and Georgia and Armenia which are categorized as “Partly Free”.
Furthermore, the study maintains that the freedom trend in Russia is negative.
All the EU countries are placed in the “Free” group.
As BarentsObserver recently reported, Russia is also one of the most dangerous countries to work in as journalist. Six Russian media workers were targeted and killed in 2009, which places the country as No. 5 on the International Federation of Journalists’ casualty list.
Published since 1972, Freedom in the World examines the ability of individuals to exercise their political and civil rights in 194 countries and 14 territories around the world. The survey analyzes developments that occurred in 2009 and assigns each country a freedom status—Free, Partly Free, or Not Free—based on a scoring of performance on key indicators.
