The St. Petersburg-based human rights organization League of Women Voters participated in a "Save St. Petersburg" march.

Eurasia

In 2009, civil society in most of Eurasia suffered under increasingly authoritarian governments, continuing a decade-long trend of regression of freedom across Eurasia. Moscow undercut reform in the region and expanded its influence over the former Soviet space. But the region’s backsliding regimes hardly needed Russian help. They, and Russia itself, have proved increasingly adept at curbing fundamental freedoms and marginalizing civil society within their own borders by stifling and repressing nongovernmental organizations and independent media.

The year marked the continuation of tried and true measures used against civil society, including onerous regulatory barriers, arbitrary denials of registration, intrusive inspections, suffocating financial controls, hostile rhetoric, and restrictive NGO and media laws. Several new backlash “innovations” were unveiled, including the use of forced military conscription to isolate and punish young male activists in Belarus, and the imprisonment of bloggers to intimidate new media in Azerbaijan.

But the most troubling development was the dramatic rise in violence used against activists. The year saw an alarming number of cases of killings, beatings, arrests, criminal suits, detentions, coercion and other forms of state oppression across the region, as well as a growing number of political prisoners in Azerbaijan, Belarus and Kazakhstan. :: MORE