Most frustrating (in an admittedly ethnocentric kind of way) is probably Turkmenistan, whose people shook the swaddled oppression of the Soviet Union only to enjoy a more local form of totalitarianism:
President Saparmurat Niyazov, the former head of the Turkmen Communist Party, took power in 1991, isolating the country, gutting formal institutions, muzzling the media, and creating an elaborate personality cult around himself, complete with a gold-plated statue in his image that revolved to always face the sun.
Still, as much as these sad, extreme examples may give Americans some perspective-based comfort, it is imperative that freedom not be appreciated by degree. A man trapped nearest the water’s surface is still drowning, no matter how many are trapped deeper. And, unfortunately, the water is rising.
Methodology and data from the report here.
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