
TOKYO Asia witnessed the biggest deterioration in its democratic conditions of any region in 2017, as minorities in countries including Indonesia and Myanmar suffered.
In the annual democracy index ranking compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit think tank, overall democracy deteriorated in six of the world's seven regions. Asia and Australasia -- the Asia-Pacific region -- dropped the most of all, logging a score of 5.63 on a scale of 0 to 10. This marks a fall of 0.11 point from a year earlier.