The AP reports that while 64% of the world's population lives in relative freedom, the rest--not so much.
Freedom declined in 2007 for a second consecutive year as 36 percent of the people in the world — about half of them in China — were not living in freedom, according to a survey by a private democracy watchdog organization.
Nearly four times as many countries showed significant declines during the year as registered improvements, the New York-based Freedom House reported. While the number of countries judged not free declined by two to 43 last year "there were many and overwhelmingly negative changes within countries already designated not free," the survey found.
The number of countries judged free stood at 90, representing 47 percent of the world's 193 countries, and those considered partly free stood at 60, or 31 percent.
Those found not free accounted for nearly 2.4 billion people, about half of them living in China.
Expectations of government concessions on human rights or modest democratic reforms in advance of the 2008 Summer Olympics did not pan out in China, where the regime continued to crack down on political activists, Internet journalists and human rights lawyers, the report said.
Reversals in freedom were seen in one-fifth of the world's countries, including Pakistan, Kenya, Egypt, Nigeria and Venezuela. One country, Mauritania, joined the list of democracies, while three, the Philippines, Bangladesh and Kenya, dropped off it.
Two countries, Thailand and Togo, were upgraded from not free to partly free.
South Asia, the former Soviet Union and the Middle East did particularly poorly, giving "an alarming signal about the development of freedom worldwide, something formerly viewed as inevitable," said Jennifer Windsor, executive director of Freedom House.
See the Freedom Map here.
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