Published by: World Tibet Network News,Tuesday - December 18, 1995

(Release at 6:30 P.M. EST (2330 GMT))

WASHINGTON, Dec 18 (Reuter) - Iraq, North Korea and Sudan were cited on Monday as the "worst of the worst" nations with regard to freedom and human rights.

The annual rating by the New York-based human rights group Freedom House characterised the three nations as completely lacking in civil liberties and political rights.

"Sudan, Iraq and North Korea are the worst of the worsts this year," said group president Adrian Karatnycky.

They were among 18 nations at the bottom of the Freedom House list, along with Afghanistan, Burma, China, Libya, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Syria. This was three fewer than made the list a year ago as Algeria, Angola, Mauritania and Rwanda left the "worst" roster while Nigeria was added.

The report said Nigeria slipped into the ranking "because of its increasingly brutal military dictatorship and rigged judicial process, which led to the execution of a leading human rights activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight others."

Freedom House rated East Timor, Kashmir, Kosovo and Tibet as the worst territories for human rights. Indonesia annexed East Timor in 1976 after its independence from Portugal the year before, predominantly Moslem Kashmir separatists are demanding independence from mostly Hindu India, Tibet has been under Chinese rule since 1950 and Kosovo nationalists demand independence from Serbia.

Globally, only 19.5 percent of the world's people live in 76 free societies with a broad range of political rights and civil liberties, according to the report. The rest of the world's population is divided among the 41.5 percent who live in partly free societies and the 39 percent living in societies that are not free.