|2016

WORLD REPORT 2016
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH
• Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa gave his government the power to dissolve
groups that “compromise public peace.” It then used this power to
shut down an environmental group challenging oil drilling in the ecologically
sensitive Amazon.
• Bolivian President Evo Morales has signed a law and issued a decree in
2013 granting his government the power to dissolve any civil society organization
whose legal representative is criminally sanctioned for carrying out
activities that “undermine security or public order.”
As Western governments intensify their efforts to stop terrorism, others have become
adept at using vague language about terrorism to deflect criticism of their
crackdown on civil society.
• Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said that crushing the Muslim Brotherhood
and the threat it once posed to him at the ballot box is really about
fighting terrorism. His ploy is backed with billions of dollars from the Gulf
monarchs, who are terrified by a movement that combines the political
Islam they claim to uphold with the electoral means they find anathema.
• Kenya included two human rights groups on a list of suspected supporters
of terrorism. The two organizations documented abuses by security forces
during counterterrorism operations. The organizations had to go to court for
a judge to clear them of any links to terrorism and unfreeze their bank accounts.
• A draft Chinese law defines terrorism to include “thought, speech, or behavior”
that attempt to “influence national policy-making.” It also includes
a catch-all prohibition of “other terrorist activities” that could be used to
deem any activity a terrorist offense.
• A counterterrorism bill under consideration in Brazil contains overbroad
and vague language that criminalizes “advocating terrorism” without any
explanation of what that entails. Another provision could be interpreted to
allow the prosecution as terrorists of protesters for “taking over” roads and
buildings.
Behind these efforts to restrict civic groups to government views of the public
good is a misconception of the role of civil society. In a rights-respecting society,
people should be free to band together to pursue their own conception of the
public good, subject only to limitations preventing direct harm to others. Many
of these goals will differ from a government’s; indeed, that is the idea. A government
is most likely to meet the needs of its people if they are free to debate what
those needs are and how best to pursue them. People joining together to advance
their points of view, in whatever variations and permutations, is an essential
part of the process.
When governments use vague laws about the public good or the national interest
to constrain civil society, they restrict the scope of public debate—both
through their own censorship and the self-censorship of groups struggling to understand
what statements or activities are allowed. That not only violates the
rights of those who want to join with others to make their voices heard. It also results
in a government that is less likely to serve its people and more likely to
serve the private interests of its leaders and their most powerful allies.
Convenient Homophobia
An increasingly popular method to crack down on civil society is to target organizations
of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people or those that
advocate on their behalf. Some repressive governments claim, much like their
calls to limit the right to seek foreign funding, that LGBT people are alien to their
culture, an imposition from the West. But no Western country is “exporting” gays
or lesbians; they have always been in every country, with their visibility largely a
product of the extent of local repression. The only imposition going on is the
local government imposing dominant views about gender and sexuality on a vulnerable
minority.
Like broader attacks on civil society, attacks on LGBT groups tend to be most intense
when governments are most intent on changing the subject. Some of the
world’s most vocal leaders on repressive LGBT legislation—Russia’s Vladimir
Putin, Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni, Nigeria’s former President Goodluck Jonathan,
and Gambia’s Yahya Jammeh—tend to be under political pressure for failures of
governance. Portraying themselves as guardians of “traditional values” against
gays is a convenient way to avoid discussion of their own mismanagement. But
because that ploy is unlikely to work indefinitely, official homophobia is often a
prelude to a broader crackdown on civil society, the proverbial canary in the coal
mine.
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