The freedom to shut you up

VIA VOA: An Adhoc report released this week confirms the obvious.

The government has tightened its control over civil society in the past year, while the number of rights abuses has remained high, a group said Wednesday.

The freedom to organize and demonstrate has diminished, as has the right to life and security, the well-respected group, Adhoc, said in an annual report. In 2007, the group documented 574 personal or political rights abuses.

VOA doesn’t say it — and the Adhoc report doesn’t appear to be online — but this muffling of society is not without context. National elections are in July and the CPP has no plans on losing. If that means putting the jackboots of suppression to the gut of freedom then so be it.

Such dictatorial behavior hardly seems necessary, though. Even independent observers predict a CPP victory in July.

Necessity, however, is not what compels the ruling party’s death grip on power; it’s instinct. And while it’s likely the ruling party will relax that grip once the ballots are counted, such heavy handed electoral tactics are hardly the mark of a flourishing democracy, to say nothing of its commentary on “free and fair” elections.