Essentially Asia & Australia are on a very unhealthy downward spiral.
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The Guardian reports
The world is becoming less free and, in Asia, almost nobody lives in a country where civil rights are not being eroded or repressed, a new civil rights report has found.
And the 2019 CIVICUS Monitor, a global research collaboration that tracks fundamental freedoms in 196 countries, has downgraded Australia from an “open” country to one where civil space has “narrowed”, citing new laws to expand government surveillance, prosecution of whistleblowers, and raids on media organisations.
Human rights organisations have again argued Australia needs a bill of rights to prevent government repression of fundamental human rights.
The CIVICUS Monitor assesses freedoms such as association, peaceful assembly and expression, categorising countries as closed, repressed, obstructed, narrowed or open.
Its report, People Power Under Attack, says across Asia those freedoms are being quietly eroded, or explicitly repressed, in almost every country.
Of 25 countries in the region, four are rated as closed, eight repressed and 10 obstructed. Civic space in South Korea and Japan is rated as narrowed, while Taiwan is the only country rated open.
“Our research shows that there continues to be a regression of civic space for activism across the region,” CIVICUS researcher Josef Benedict said. “The percentage of people living in Asian countries with closed, repressed or obstructed civic space is now at 95%.”