7,7 or, Catching Turkmenistan

Via neweurasia, I see that Freedom House’s Freedom in the World 2006 (PDF) is out.

The only changes in Central Asia were an improved score for Kyrgyzstan and a decline for Uzbekistan. In fact, Uzbekistan is now scraping the bottom of the barrel. It managed to move down alongside Turkmenistan with the worst score possible, a 7,7. It now shares that score with other notables Cuba, North Korea, Libya, Syria, Sudan, and Burma.

For a discussion of the rest of the Central Asia and Caucasus region’s scores, see neweurasia.