DISINFO: US government pays Freedom House to spread negative public perceptions of Russia, China and Iran
SUMMARY
The US government pays Freedom House to spread negative public perceptions about Russia, China and Iran. These three countries are misleadingly classified as “unfree” by US state-controlled media and by Freedom House because they pursue policies that are independent from US influence. Turkey, Vietnam and Kazakhstan are also classified as unfree countries by Freedom House.
Freedom House’s choice of which countries to label as “unfree” is based on the US government’s need to shape public opinion in the “right direction”. Furthermore, Freedom Houses’ concept of “freedom” is based on the idea of negative freedom: freedom from obligations, tradition and values. This idea has led the West to embrace gender change and cancel culture aimed at destroying its cultural heritage and falsifying history.
RESPONSE
The article’s message is consistent with a recurrent pro-Kremlin narrative claiming that Western criticism of human and civil rights violations and repression in Russia and other regimes are unfounded propaganda and are driven by American and Western geopolitical interests.
The article also contains the recurrent pro-Kremlin narrative about the alleged decadence of the post-modern West.
Freedom House is a non-governmental organisation founded in 1941 that produces studies and reports on democracy, political rights and civil liberties issues. Its annual report - entitled Freedom in the World - studies the state of civil liberties and assigns a score to each country, calculated on the basis of a number of indicators regarding political rights and civil liberties.
The 2021 edition involved over 125 analysts who have used a broad range of sources, including news articles, academic analyses, reports by nongovernmental organizations and more. They investigate electoral process, political pluralism, functioning of government, freedom of expression, associational and organizational rights and more.
Systematic violations of human rights and civil liberties in Russia, China and Iran have been documented by numerous sources. In Russia, independent media and bloggers have been persecuted and imprisoned, a number of opponents and critics of the government have been killed, and internet users and journalists are subject to severe restrictions.
According to Amnesty International, in Iran during 2019 “the authorities heavily suppressed the rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly. Security forces used lethal force unlawfully to crush protests, killing hundreds, and arbitrarily detaining thousands of protesters.”
According to Human Rights Watch, in China the government has deepened repression at home and sought to muzzle critics abroad. It has arbitrarily detained hundreds of human rights defenders and lawyers, tightened control over civil society, media, and the internet, and deployed invasive surveillance technology.
Read similar cases claiming that Russia respects human and civil rights: police to illegal gatherings like in any other country, that Freedom House responds to political commands, that claims about repression and concentration camps in China are exaggerations aiming to stop its influence, and that human rights are a Trojan horse in the West’s hybrid warfare