Board Thread:General Mod Discussion/@comment-29145474-20170217010507/@comment-25101089-20170217022253

Rhûn is a very large place, and I am sure many of the peoples of the Uttermost East don't even have interactions with Mordor or Gondor. So those peoples could be considered 'Free Easterlings', not because they withstood Sauron, but simply because they escaped his gaze (similar to Tauredain - who are counted among the 'free peoples'). Certainly the Shire is much closer to Mordor than parts of Rhûn and yet the Hobbits were outside the knowledge of Sauron for a very long time.