These are societies in which state control over daily life is pervasive and intrusive, where independent organizations and political opposition are banned or suppressed, and where fear of government retribution is rooted in reality. This year's report, which is available outside this hall on the NGO table, demonstrates that people living in these parts of the world suffer the violation of their fundamental human rights on a daily basis. Allow me to detail some of the more egregious cases. China, for example, is widely heralded for its economic reforms. In its ongoing crackdown, the Chinese government continues to employ the inhumane institution of re-education through labor, an arbitrary form of administrative detention that suspends any due process rights.
China also continues to execute more people than all the other countries in the world combined.
Freedom House has long considered North Korea one of the world's most repressive regimes. Despite the utter failure of Communism to provide prosperity and freedom, North Korea holds to a rigidly totalitarian course whose people remain cut off from the rest of the world. Opposition political parties are illegal, and there is little organized dissent as a result of the regime's repression and widespread internal surveillance, which even encourages children to report on their parents. Even the most basic elements of civil society and rule of law do not exist in North Korea. Another consistent human rights violator is Cuba.