A group of global civil society organizations have placed the US on a watchlist for urgent concern over the health of its civic society, alongside Turkey, Serbia, El Salvador, Indonesia and Kenya.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, a new report released by the non-profit Civicus placed the US on its watchlist following \u201csustained attacks on civic freedoms\u201d across the country, according to the group.<\/p>\n
Civicus pointed to three major issues including the deployment of military to quell protests, growing restrictions placed on journalists and civil society, as well as the aggressive targeting of anti-war advocates surrounding Palestine.<\/p>\n
At Civicus, countries are assigned a rating over their civic space conditions. The ratings include \u201copen\u201d, \u201cnarrowed\u201d, \u201cobstructed\u201d, \u201crepressed\u201d and \u201cclosed\u201d. The group has declared the US\u2019s civic space as \u201cnarrowed\u201d.<\/p>\n
According to the group, the \u201cnarrowed\u201d rating<\/a> is for countries that still allow for individuals and civil society organizations to exercise their rights to freedom of association, peaceful assembly and expression but where violations of these rights still take place.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople can form associations to pursue a wide range of interests, but full enjoyment of this right is impeded by occasional harassment, arrest or assault of people deemed critical of those in power,\u201d the rating description says, adding: \u201cProtests are conducted peacefully, although authorities sometimes deny permission, citing security concerns, and excessive force, which may include tear gas and rubber bullets, are sometimes used against peaceful demonstrators.\u201d<\/p>\n With regard to the media, countries with a \u201cnarrowed\u201d rating allow for media to \u201cdisseminate a wide range of information, although the state undermines complete press freedom either through strict regulation or by exerting political pressure on media owners\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThe United States appears to be sliding deeper into the quicksands of authoritarianism. Peaceful protests are confronted with military force, critics are treated as criminals, journalists are targeted, and support for civil society and international cooperation have been cut back,\u201d Mandeep Tiwana, Civicus\u2019s secretary general, said in a statement.<\/p>\n \u201cSix months into Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s second term, a bizarre assault on fundamental freedoms and constitutional safeguards has become the new normal,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n Pointing to Trump\u2019s deployment <\/a>of marines and national guard troops to California in June in response to the widespread protests against immigration raids, Tiwana said: \u201cThis level of militarisation sets a dangerous precedent. It\u2019s a line that democratically elected leaders aren\u2019t meant to cross.\u201d<\/p>\n Tiwana also pointed to the Trump administration\u2019s latest attacks against media networks, including funding restrictions<\/a> on public broadcast stations including PBS and NPR.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat they\u2019re trying to do is actually defund critical news sources and deny American people the ability to receive truthful non-partisan reporting by pulling their funding,\u201d Tiwana told the Guardian.<\/p>\n In its report, Civicus also warned of the growing criminalisation of peaceful advocacy, adding that \u201cauthorities have continued reprisals against activists expressing solidarity with Palestinian rights.\u201d<\/p>\n Citing the Trump administration\u2019s clampdown on foreign-born student activists<\/a> including Mahmoud Khalil, Mohsen Mahdawi and R\u00fcmeysa \u00d6zt\u00fcrk, as well as the sanctioning<\/a> of Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur for the West Bank<\/a> and Gaza, Tiwana said: \u201cWe are seeing a wide-ranging attack on civic space in the US by the federal and some state governments. Authorities in the US should reverse course from the present undemocratic path by guaranteeing everyone\u2019s first amendment right to organise and dissent legitimately.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A group of global civil society organizations have placed the US on a watchlist for urgent concern over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":303115,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[49,978,659],"class_list":{"0":"post-303114","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-united-states","9":"tag-us","10":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114940564258286430","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303114\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/303115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}