U.S. Slams Armed Crackdowns on Global Pro-Democracy Protests

The United States on Thursday denounced what it said was the growing use of security forces by repressive regimes to crackdown on a worldwide groundswell of pro-democracy protests.

"The fundamental struggle for dignity, for decency in the treatment of human beings... is a driving force in all of human history," Secretary of State John Kerry said as he released his department's 2013 human rights report.

But 2013 was "one of the most momentous years in the struggle for greater rights and freedoms in modern history," the top U.S. diplomat told reporters.

Kerry lamented what he said were the hundreds "murdered in the dead of night" in Syria in a chemical weapons attack.

And he noted that in Bangladesh "thousands of workers perished in the greatest workplace safety disaster in history."

Kerry also denounced the rolling back of gay rights in almost 80 countries around the world, which he dubbed "an affront to every reasonable conscience."

The U.S., he said, promotes global human rights to build a world "where marching peacefully in the street does not get you beaten up in a blind alley, or even killed in plain sight."

The report complained that "around the world authoritarian governments used security forces to consolidate power and suppress dissent to the detriment of their country's long-term stability, security and economic development."

From Sudan in the Horn of Africa, to the streets of Ukraine, the bombed-out neighborhoods of Syria and remote areas of Myanmar, security forces must be held to account for human rights abuses if democratic transitions are to succeed, the report insisted.

"This is about accountability," Kerry insisted. "It's about ending impunity."

In 2013, "transitioning democracies dealt with predictable setbacks in their quest for political change, and new democracies struggled to deliver effective governance and uphold rule of law," the report said.

In order to ensure abuses are brought to justice, countries needed to invest in independent judiciaries and create democratic government institutions.

The State Department's annual country-by-country index was released as the world marks the 65th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

But six decades later "more than one third of the world's population still lives under authoritarian rule," the report found.

"A widening gap persists between the rights conferred by law and the daily realities for many around the globe."

The report also highlighted how new and fragile democracies, emerging out of the Arab Spring, are cracking down on civil society.

And it threw a spotlight on a lack of labor rights in countries such as Bangladesh, where more than 1,000 garment workers were killed in a factory building collapse in April.

"Dangerous and exploitive" working conditions in other nations such as the gold mines in Nigeria and the treatment of migrant workers in the Gulf also came in for criticism.

The use of military might to suppress dissent was particularly egregious in Syria, where President Bashar Assad's regime was accused of unleashing a sarin gas attack in August that allegedly killed some 1,429 civilians, including 426 children.

"It is one of many horrors in a civil war filled with countless crimes against humanity, from the torture and murder of prisoners to the targeting of civilians with barrel bombs and Scud missiles, which has claimed more than 100,000 live," the report said.

Egypt was also heavily criticized for "the removal of an elected civilian government and excessive use of force by security forces, including unlawful killings and torture," among the Arab nation's most significant human rights abuses.

"From Independence Square in Ukraine to Gezi Park in Turkey, authorities resorted to violence to disperse peaceful protests around the world, seriously injuring scores of people," the report said.

"Cuba continued to organize mobs to physically assault peaceful marchers, China tightened controls on the Internet and stepped up a crackdown on anti-corruption protesters and other activists, Vietnam continued to use vague national security laws to curb freedom of expression... and Russia continued to suppress those critical of the government."

But despite the difficulties recounted in the report, it also noted that "the courageous pursuit of human dignity remains enduring and undeterred."