I visited Mongolia when I was backpacking across Asia and remember it being the first time in about 6 months I didn't have to use a VPN to access social media, after the Cambodia/Vietnam/China swathe of censorship.
Singapore is arguably a much nicer place to live, and you are less likely to get gunned down by a government hit squad on trumped up drug trafficking charges there, but most of the time and in most places you are not going to feel the presence of the Filipino government in the Philippines much at all. The same isn't true for Singapore. So maybe this depends on how you feel about government generally, but if you're implying that the Philippines' government is more oppressive or obtrusive that's odd.
I feel like while many countries are corrupt (though perhaps not as badly as the Philippines), Singapore is second to none in terms of taking liberty away from its citizens, one of a few countries I wouldn't live in due to government, as well as China.
Number 11 is Indonesia and 12 is Singapore. Outside of lack of leniency in sentencing which is the ultimate in democracy and lack of privacy in public areas I know of nothing repressive in Singapore. Especially compared the systematic abuses to various groups that Indonesia has exhibited in the past 30 to 40 years.
Do you think of the other countries in the middle east as having apartheid? Why not? Do you think Arabs in Israel are treated worse than Jews in Iran/Iraq/Egypt/Syria etc.?
Israel has apartheid because it has a class of noncitizens restricted to a tiny, discontinuous territory that lacks the resources to support itself. Apartheid doesn't refer to the treatment as such, but to the legal status of the persecuted group. And in that sense the Palestinian Territories are almost exactly like the bantustans of South Africa.
amm: there is sexual apartheid in Saudi Arabia. Almost all buildings and public areas are strictly segregated by sex and women do not have anything close to the same legal rights as men. Though there have been reforms pushed through recently it's still very unequal.
In Israel, men and women, Jews and Christians and Muslims and atheists all have essentially the same legal rights as any other citizen. Though there are some areas that are prohibited to Jews. And some aspects of civil law such as marriage are different and governed by religious authorities. But generally speaking, there is no apartheid at all between any Israeli citizens. It's ridiculous to assert that there is.
On the other hand if you include non-citizens residing in the West Bank or Gaza as being part of Israel, then, yes, those non-citizens do not have the same rights as Israeli citizens do.
I will concede that I'm not too familiar with the Israel/Palestine conflict in general, but I don't think the awareness of a lack of citizenship changes much. The Arabs in West Bank and Gaza effectively have no citizenship because the Palestinian government is unrecognized and the Israeli government that's partially in control of territories does not grant the residents citizenship.
If 1980s South Africa spontaneously decided that all residents of an overwhelmingly Cape Coloured community were no longer citizens, would you say those residents were no longer living under apartheid? I mean sure it's technically not apartheid by definition, but it would be effectively identical.
To be clear, I'm not arguing that Israel is worse on the equality front than the other Middle Eastern countries. I just don't understand how stateless people who have lived in the territories for generations being barred from citizenship makes it more tolerable.
If the majority votes for an oppressive regime and they get an oppressive regime: that is democracy. This quiz does not claim that democratic countries are better in respecting human rights than non-democratic.
It's funny, not sad, when people think that the country in the middle-east with the most respect for the rights of women, gays, and criminal defendants, the country with the greatest rule of law, and the country with the greatest range of civil rights is considered an oppressive regime. Do you judge any of Israel's neighbors--really, any country in a 1500 km radius--by the same standards?
Cyprus is only 228 km from Israel. Though, granted, they don't get anywhere near the same level of scrutiny. But if they did I think they'd fare okay. Even given the contention between the Greek and Turkish factions on the island.
Time limit for once seems to fit the size of the quiz. I couldn't just name every country in Asia. I ended up missing Mongolia and East Timor. Kind of surprised Singapore doesn't make the list. Top 6 are all obvious.
East Timor is only hypothesized to be a failed state. The progress they're making discredits this, as East Timor is progressing stability-wise (economic, political, and social).
um... Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea are all more democratic than the U.S., so are you saying our gerrymandered and rural-biased republic where the candidate with the most votes doesn't always win is undemocratic???
For comparison, the US has a 7.96 on this scale, and the UK has an 8.53. The top country is Norway, with 9.87, and the bottom country is, unsurprisingly, North Korea with 1.08.
Malaysia's score on the Democracy Index has considerably improved from 6.54 in 2017 to 6.88 in 2018. The party that had ruled Malaysia since 1957 (independence) was peacefully defeated by a new political party in the 2018 general election. After the election the biggest seizure of goods in Malaysian history occurred in the former Prime Minister's residence and he was arrested.
Why does the source for this quiz include Kazakhstan, the Caucasus, and Turkey as European countries? I am aware of the debate in Turkey, and can understand(slightly) the argument for the Caucasus. Am I missing something in Kazakhstan? I have never even considered it to be in Europe. Is there a new movement going around?
Not really, Kazakhstan is an Asian country geographically, however, because some of its territory is in Europe (anything west of the Ural River), it can therefore be considered to be a European country, because of its cultural closeness to Russia.
Might be because i'm french but i hated the feeling of being restricted for anything in Singapore.
Cannot even drink water in the metro ! WTF
In Israel, men and women, Jews and Christians and Muslims and atheists all have essentially the same legal rights as any other citizen. Though there are some areas that are prohibited to Jews. And some aspects of civil law such as marriage are different and governed by religious authorities. But generally speaking, there is no apartheid at all between any Israeli citizens. It's ridiculous to assert that there is.
On the other hand if you include non-citizens residing in the West Bank or Gaza as being part of Israel, then, yes, those non-citizens do not have the same rights as Israeli citizens do.
If 1980s South Africa spontaneously decided that all residents of an overwhelmingly Cape Coloured community were no longer citizens, would you say those residents were no longer living under apartheid? I mean sure it's technically not apartheid by definition, but it would be effectively identical.
To be clear, I'm not arguing that Israel is worse on the equality front than the other Middle Eastern countries. I just don't understand how stateless people who have lived in the territories for generations being barred from citizenship makes it more tolerable.
Feel free to correct whatever I've gotten wrong.
insane.
Surely, it's in Europe. It was always considered a European country when I was growing up. The Republic of Cyprus has even joined the EU.
What are the arguments for classifying it as an Asian country?