The international rights group Freedom House said Wednesday that the prospect of an international system built on democratic ideals is under greater threat now than at any point in the past quarter-century.

Freedom House said in its annual roundup Wednesday that the state of democracy in 2014 was “exceptionally grim.” Syria ranked the lowest in the just released annual report, but the group recorded more declines than gains in democratic freedoms around the world.

Freedom House said the one notable exception is Tunisia, which in 2014 became the first Arab country to achieve the status of “free” since Lebanon’s civil war four decades ago.

A “troubling number” of economic powers and regionally influential nations slid backwards in their democratic standards, according to Wednesday’s report. Dangers to freedom of expression were said to come from state surveillance, Internet restrictions, and curbs on the freedom to make individual decisions on things like education, employment, and travel. Russia, Venezuela, Egypt, Turkey, Thailand, Nigeria, Kenya, Azerbaijan, and Hungary were among the nations noted for such declines.

More troubling, Freedom House said, are more explicit rejections of democratic standards, such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, “including the outright seizure and formal annexation of Crimea,” which it noted as a “prime example.”

Freedom House also said Chinese President Xi Jinping has grown more aggressive about defending disputed maritime territory, and as his anti-corruption sweep has reached deeply into the Communist party, the report says the probe has ignored the principles of due process.

Also a concern was a rollback of democratic freedoms in Egypt, corresponding to the rise of President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi. And in Turkey, the report said, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has waged an “increasingly aggressive campaign against democratic pluralism,” including censorship of journalists and changes in school curricula.

Freedom House named one other possible culprit for the decline in democratic freedoms: the fight against terrorism. It said governments such as Venezuela, Kenya, and China, have invoked terrorism laws to silence dissent.
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