There are countries where human rights are still denied for people, therefore we can find countries without freedom of assembly. The freedom of assembly, together with the freedom of association, is one of the essential civil and political rights. The right of people to publicly protests the government and its action has been enshrined in the United States Constitution by the Founding Fathers and is considered a basis for political activism. Now we can read an edifying article from Insider Monkey about this topic.
Now without a further ado let’s see what Insider Monkey has investigated for us. As I haven’t known much of this topic, every each of country was new to me. We have picked three countries from their list.
The first country is Egypt, and to tell you the truth I’m not surprised. Egypt seems determined not to allow the rerun of Tahrir Square protests that rocked the country during the Arab Spring. With the military firmly in control, every gathering must be approved by the authorities and few, if any, are ever approved. This makes people reluctant to join, as the government repeatedly states it’s resolved to prevent demonstrations by any means necessary, the use of lethal force included. The latest demonstrations were held in April 2016, over the sovereignty of Egyptian islands in Red Sea government is transferring to Saudi Arabia. In the violent crackdown, more than 20 people were injured and arrested by the police. The United Arab Emirates are in a peculiar situation when it comes to the freedom of assembly. The citizens don’t really organize any protests, but foreign workers, who outnumber the native population and are working and living in appalling conditions often try to organize strikes and sit ins in public. Since they aren’t citizens, the government doesn’t recognize their right to protest and usually sends in the police to disperse them, which has caused several deaths among the protestors. What was incredible for me was that Russia is on the list. The latest series of protest in Russia held in more than 100 cities were sparked by the report on the corruption of Russian leadership, mainly Russian Prime minister Medvedev. The fact that the protests weren’t officially allowed didn’t stop thousands of Russians taking to the street, but it gave the government a pretext of declaring them illegal and arresting more than 1000 people. Vladimir Putin’s grasp on Russia still seems strong, but signs of loosening grip are starting to show, as his regime gets pounded almost daily with the allegations of corruption and undemocratic practices.
For any further interesting information read Insider Monkey’s article about 11 countries without freedom of assembly.
