Myanmar, Belarus, and Uganda witnessed the best deteriorations in internet freedom amid electoral and constitutional crises, consistent with Freedom House report.
China and Pakistan are among rock bottom 10 countries on the worldwide rankings on internet freedom released by a world freedom advocacy group. Washington-based Freedom House has published a report titled “Freedom on internet 2021: the worldwide Drive to regulate Big Tech” which claimed global internet freedom declined for the 11th consecutive year.
Myanmar, Belarus, and Uganda witnessed the best deteriorations in internet freedom amid electoral and constitutional crises. Myanmar reported a huge 14-point decline, the most important since the group started the documentation project. Myanmar’s military recently captured power during a coup and regularly pack up the web to crackdown on pro-democracy protesters.
On the opposite hand, Iceland, Canada and Germany were among the highest 10 countries with greater internet freedom.
The report has measured the extent of internet freedom for 70 countries and assigns them numerical scores starting from 100 (the freest nation) to zero (the least free). The report determines the extent of internet freedom by examining three broad categories: obstacles to access; limits on content; and violations of user rights.
Countries with scores between 70 to 100 are designated as ‘Free’ on internet freedom status while those with points between 40 to 69 are designated as ‘Partly-free’. Countries scoring but 39 are designated as ‘Not free’.
China remained the world’s worst abuser of internet freedom for the seventh consecutive year and did not score one point within the ‘violation of user rights’ category. “The ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is tightening its control over the state bureaucracy, the media, online speech, religious groups, universities, businesses, and civil society associations, and it’s undermined its own already modest rule-of-law reforms,” the report says.