|2016

WORLD REPORT 2016
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH
bers without a journalist intermediary. The result has greatly enhanced civil society’s
ability to be heard and, ultimately, to demand change. The impact of social
media is not all positive—users include purveyors of hate as well as “trolls”
funded or inspired by governments to reinforce official propaganda. Still, a public
able to broadcast its concerns through social media is an important supplement
to mainstream media for challenging the government line.
The most dramatic manifestations of this evolution were the Arab uprisings that
began in late 2010, in 2014 the Maidan revolution in Ukraine and the Occupy
Central movement in Hong Kong. Each demonstrated the synergy between a restless
public and civil society activists adept at using social media to mobilize
people in the streets.
But the combination of civil society and social media has also been felt in less
spectacular ways. From China to Venezuela to Malaysia, it has forced governments
that prefer to rule unconstrained from above to face pressure to be more
accountable to the people below. Repression, corruption, or simple indifference
are at greater risk when readily scrutinized by a more connected, better organized
society.
The Autocrats’ Reaction
Disinclined to accept such popular limits on their rule, autocrats are fighting
back, in what has emerged as an intense and self-reinforcing trend. As repressive
governments learn from each other, refine their techniques, and pass on
lessons learned, they have launched the broadest backlash against civil society
in a generation.
The most common tools these days are efforts to deprive civic groups of their
right to seek funding abroad when domestic sources are unavailable and to
smother civil society with vague and pliable regulations. At risk is the promise of
more representative government that social media had brought to its more empowered
civil society users.
To note this worrisome trend is hardly to spell the demise of civil society. Just as
the great potential of an empowered people has pressed terrified autocrats to try
to return society to a more atomized, malleable form, so that potential enables
civil society to fight back. But it is far from clear who will prevail in this duel be-
tween peoples’ quest for accountable government and autocrats’ desire for unfettered
rule.
Key third parties in the contest are the many governments that profess belief in
the principles of human rights underlying democratic rule. Their willingness to
adhere to principle over the temptation to accommodate rich or powerful autocrats
can be decisive in determining whether dictatorship or rights-respecting
representative government prevails. But as Western powers violate rights in addressing
refugees or terrorism, their ability to uphold the broader set of rights is
compromised.
Reasons for Covering Up
When you scratch the surface, efforts to suppress civil society are often led by
governments that have something to hide. For each offender, there are failures
of governance that officials would prefer not be discussed, a record of misconduct
they want kept in the shadows, a subject they want changed. Because restricting
civil society is about avoiding accountability, the topics that
governments choose to suppress are a good indicator of their deepest fears.
China and Russia, perhaps the two most influential offenders, are good examples.
Each government made an implicit pact with its people: in return for strict
limits on political participation, they promised rapid economic growth and enhanced
personal opportunity. They are now having trouble keeping their side of
the bargain.
In part that is because the lack of public scrutiny has led to poor economic policies.
Russia’s elite milked oil and gas revenue without the diversification of its
hydrocarbon-dependent economy that more critical public scrutiny might have
encouraged. The economy grew more precarious in the face of plummeting oil
and gas prices coupled with sanctions imposed in response to the Kremlin’s military
activities in Ukraine.
In China, economic growth is hobbled by the same pathologies as the political
system: the impulse to whitewash seemingly controversial information, such as
how to respond to the August stock market plunge; the reliance on a court system
that does the Communist Party’s bidding rather than impartially adjudicat-
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