Elections and political balances overturned in the squares. The year of Pope Francis’ trip to Southeast Asia and Oceania and the first Korean Nobel Prize in Literature. The great wounds that remain open in the Middle East. Like every year, the editorial team of has selected 10 symbolic faces from across the continent to try to tour together, on the last day of the year, some of the most important events of 2024 in Asia.
MUHAMMAD YUNUS (Bangladesh)
He was called upon to take the reins of Bangladesh after anti-government protests forced former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to resign and flee to India. The name of the Nobel Peace Prize winner, Muhammad Yunus, had been mentioned from the beginning by the young university students who led the demonstrations. But in almost six months of technical government, many questions remain open, starting with the elections, which were announced for late 2025 or early 2026. Tensions with India have also increased due to the lack of protection of the religious minorities, especially Hindus and Christians, who are considered voters and supporters of Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League. There is a risk that the influence of Islamist opposition parties will increase.
BUSHRA BIBI (Pakistan)
Released after nine months in prison, the wife of former Prime Minister Imran Khan (who has been detained for more than a year) took the lead in the protests of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) – the opposition party – against the government of Shahbaz Sharif. Born Bushra Riaz Watto (Bibi, like Begum, is an honorary title for women in South Asia), she married Imran Khan in 2018 (for him it was his third marriage and for her her second). Until now Bushra had appeared little in public, but it would not be unprecedented if political leadership passed into her hands, because in the region it is often the wives and daughters who continue the political struggles of their husbands and fathers. According to some analysts, Bushra already behaves like a party leader.
ANURA KUMARA DISSANAYAKE (Sri Lanka)
The election of Sri Lanka’s new president, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, in September marked a turning point in the country’s politics, long dominated by well-known family dynasties. The election was confirmed in November with the election of the new parliament: the coalition led by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, a Marxist-inspired party, obtained 159 seats out of 225 thanks to 63% of the votes. Also contributing to the change was the economic crisis that continues to overwhelm the island country and the agreements signed with the International Monetary Fund to restructure the debt, which Dissanayake has promised to review. In 2025, his campaign promises to alleviate poverty will be put to the test.
HAN KANG (South Korea)
The year 2024 has put the spotlight on Korea for many reasons: from the Pyongyang soldiers sent by the regime to fight alongside the Russians in Ukraine, to the deep political crisis in Seoul, which since the opposition’s victory in the parliamentary elections April have divided the country in two. Until the long night of December 3, with President Yoon Suk-yeol’s attempt to turn back the needles of history by imposing martial law and the reaction of Korean society that led to the president’s impeachment, and was the beginning of a very tough institutional confrontation between the government, which is still in the hands of the conservatives of the People’s Power Party, and the opposition, which has a large majority in the National Assembly. In this scenario, the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature awarded to the Korean writer Han Kang takes on special meaning, the first to an Asian writer and the second in absolute terms for South Korea, after the Nobel Peace Prize that was awarded in 2000. to President Kim Dae-jung. 54 years old, awarded “for her intense poetic prose that addresses historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life,” at this moment her books also become a prism through which to look at today’s turbulent Seoul.
TO LAM (Vietnam)
Appointed at the beginning of August as secretary of the Communist Party, the highest position in the State, replacing Nguyen Phu Trong, who died two weeks earlier, To Lam is the new strongman of Vietnam, in addition to having emerged triumphant in the purges of the “anti-corruption campaign.” An internal struggle within the single party that runs the country and the institutional leadership, which did not spare even (former) presidents and high officials, as well as top-level businessmen like Truong My Lan, sentenced to death. The rise of the former Minister of Public Security occurred due to the “resignation” of many other prominent leaders swept away by the “purges”, including former President Vo Vhan Tuong himself. Foreign multinationals that have invested in Vietnam for export-oriented production have always praised the country’s political stability and were caught off guard by the country’s internal turbulence. From the beginning, To Lam, 67, has pursued a policy of balance between the superpowers and on his first trip abroad he visited Beijing, where he was received by the owner of the house, Xi Jinping. Weeks later, the next stop was the United States, where he attended the UN General Assembly and met with the outgoing president, Joe Biden.
ALICE KISIYA (Israel-Palestine)
Alice Kisiya, a Palestinian Christian from the West Bank, is the face of the fight against the occupation policy carried out by Israel’s far-right government, which has intensified in the shadow of the wars in Gaza and Lebanon. Between the end of July and the beginning of August 2024, the army declared their lands a military zone and handed them over to the settlers. She and her mother Michelle were arrested for “resisting” the illegal expropriation and released after several weeks. Since then, Alice and her family – who have owned the land for 40 years – set up a solidarity tent on the site and joined members of the Israeli-Palestinian NGO “Combatants for Peace”. The case is emblematic of the expansionist policy of the Jewish State, which in December approved the increase in settlers in the Golan (Syria) after the fall of Bashar al-Assad and established a military presence in Gaza and southern Lebanon. According to Palestinian data, in the past year, as a result of the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, settlers carried out almost 17,000 raids against people, land and property in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Peace Now estimates show there are half a million settlers – illegal under international law – spread across 146 settlements and 224 outposts.
REFUGEES (Syria)
Almost 12 million refugees and displaced people, a current symbol of one of the most serious humanitarian crises in recent decades. They are the face of the most catastrophic consequences of the war in Syria, which broke out in the spring of 2011 and in recent weeks has had a surprising evolution with the hasty flight of Bashar al-Assad and the collapse of the regime. According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), the conflict has turned around 6.8 million people into internally displaced people and almost 5.5 million into refugees in neighboring countries, especially Turkey, where there are almost 3.8 million. million, along with Jordan and Lebanon. After having welcomed Syrians for years in the name of a common “Muslim brotherhood”, according to a policy decided by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan himself, today Ankara considers that the overthrow of Assad opens the possibility of favoring a significant repatriation. The plan also contemplates the creation of a “buffer zone” to locate returning refugees and prevent advances – or attacks – by Syrian Kurdish militias. Since September, when the Israeli offensive against Hezbollah began, Lebanon (1.5 million Syrian refugees) has also seen an increase in the number of returning refugees. Hundreds of thousands of people have returned to Syria, to find a country devastated by years of war and that today, with the rise to power of the rebels, must define a new political and institutional balance in a context of very serious economic crisis.
CARLOS YULO (Philippines)
Even the bishops of the Philippines have praised the talent, perseverance and faith of Carlos Edriel Poquiz Yulo, the 24-year-old gymnast who on August 3 and 4 won two gold medals in floor exercises and vault at the Paris Olympics. , the first Filipino athlete to achieve this result. Yulo, who trained for a long time in Japan and is the second Filipino to win a gold medal for the Philippines, after Hidilyn Diaz in weightlifting at the 2020 Tokyo Games (postponed a year due to the Covid-19 pandemic), which indicates a constant growth among athletes from Asian nations, increasingly present also in disciplines and specialties of Western tradition, such as fencing or athletics.
NASURRUDIN UMAR (Indonesia)
For the Catholic Churches of Asia and the Pacific, 2024 was the year of Pope Francis’ intensely desired trip, which in September took him to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore. One of the moments that will remain etched in memory is the welcome that the Pontiff received from the Grand Imam of the Istiqlal Mosque in Jakarta, Nasuruddin Umar. After touring the Friendship Tunnel – which connects the Muslim holy site with the Catholic cathedral church of Our Lady of the Assumption – Francis was received by Nasuruddin Uman and signed with him the Istiqlal Declaration, which invites religions to work together in two serious crises that humanity faces today: the dehumanization of people’s lives in conflicts, which sows death even among women, the elderly and children, and the fight against climate change. Tasks that today the Grand Imam Nasuruddin Umar is called to perform in person within the Indonesian government of the new president Prabowo Subianto, in which he personally assumed the position of Minister of Religious Affairs in October.
ZHEN XUEBIN (China)
For the Church in China, 2024 was the year of the third renewal of the Provisional Agreement between the People’s Republic of China and the Holy See on the appointment of bishops, which came into force in October and has extended its validity to four years. In those same days, probably the most significant appointment that has been made so far under this Agreement was also announced: Rome and Beijing agreed on the appointment of a coadjutor bishop for Beijing. This is Bishop Matteo Zhen Xuebin, 54 years old, who now collaborates, with the right of succession, with Bishop Giuseppe Li Shan, the bishop who has led the Catholic community of the Chinese capital since 2007 and is president of the Patriotic Association. The appointment has come as a surprise, since Bishop Li Shan is only five years older than Bishop Zhen Xuebin and approximately a third of Chinese dioceses, despite the Agreement, do not have a bishop. However, it indicates a prominent role in the probably near future within the Church in China for this prelate originally from Shanxi, who in the ’90s was one of the first Chinese seminarians who had the opportunity to train abroad and studied Theology. in the United States.
Add Comment