Political breakthroughs in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka with Yunus and Dissanayake, Han Kang the first Asian woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. The Istiqlal Declaration signed by Pope Francis and the Imam in Jakarta. The most important events of the last 12 months in Asia through selected personalities from AsiaNews.

Electoral appointments and political balances overturned in the squares. The year of Pope Francis' trip to South-East Asia and Oceania and the first Korean Nobel Prize for Literature. The great wounds that remain open in the Middle East. Like every year, the AsiaNews editorial staff has selected 10 symbolic faces from across the Continent to try to retrace together on the last day of the year some of the most important events of 2024 in Asia.

MUHAMMAD YUNUS (Bangladesh)

He was called 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 Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus had been mentioned from the start by the young university students who led the demonstrations. But in almost six months of technical government, many questions remain unanswered, starting with the elections, announced for the end of 2025 or the beginning of 2026. Tensions with India have also risen because of the lack of protection for religious minorities, especially Hindus and Christians, who are considered voters and supporters of Sheikh Hasina's Awami League. The risk is 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 (he, however, is still in detention after more than a year) has taken the lead in the protests of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), the opposition party, against the government led by Shahbaz Sharif. Born Bushra Riaz Watto (Bibi, like Begum, is an honorary title for women in South Asia), she married Imran Khan in 2018 (it was his third and her second marriage). Bushra had so far appeared little in public, but it would not be unheard of if political leadership passed into her hands because in the region it is often the wives and daughters who continue the political struggles of husbands and fathers. According to some analysts, Bushra already acts as a de facto 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 Sri Lankan politics, long dominated by well-known family dynasties. This choice was reconfirmed in November with the election of the new parliament: the coalition led by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, a Marxist-inspired party, won 159 seats out of 225 thanks to 63% of the votes. Also contributing to the change was the economic crisis that continues to grip the island nation and the agreements signed with the International Monetary Fund to restructure the debt, which Dissanayake has promised to review. In 2025, the poverty alleviation promises made during the election campaign will be put to the test.

HAN KANG (South Korea)

2024 was a year that for many reasons turned the spotlight on Korea: from the Pyongyang soldiers sent by the regime to fight alongside Russian soldiers in Ukraine, to the deep political crisis in Seoul, which since the victory of the oppositions in the April parliamentary elections has split the country in two. Up to the long night of 3 December with President Yoon Suk-yeol's attempt to turn back the hands of history by imposing martial law and the reaction of Korean society that led to the president's impeachment. And the opening of a bitter institutional clash between the government still in the hands of the conservatives of the People's Power Party and the oppositions that can count on a large majority in the National Assembly. In this scenario, the Nobel Prize for Literature 2024 awarded to the Korean writer Han Kang, the first to an Asian writer and the second ever for South Korea, after the Nobel Peace Prize awarded in 2000 to President Kim Dae-jung, also takes on special significance. Fifty-four years old, awarded ‘for her intense poetic prose that deals with historical traumas and lays bare the fragility of human life’, her books now also become a prism through which to look at today's fractious Seoul.

TO LAM (Vietnam)

Appointed at the beginning of August as Secretary of the Communist Party, the highest office in the State, to replace Nguyen Phu Trong who had died two weeks earlier, To Lam is the new strongman in Vietnam, as well as the winner in the purges of the ‘anti-corruption campaign’. An internal struggle within the single party that leads the country and at the top of the institutions, which has not spared even (former) presidents and senior officials, as well as prominent businessmen such as Truong My Lan, sentenced to death. The rise of the former Minister of Public Security came about through the ‘resignation’ of many other prominent leaders swept up in the ‘purges’, including former President Vo Vhan Tuong himself. Foreign multinationals that have invested in Vietnam for export-oriented production have long praised its political stability, being taken by surprise by the internal turmoil. From the outset, 67-year-old To Lam promoted a policy of balance between superpowers by visiting Beijing as his first trip abroad, received by host Xi Jinping. In the following weeks, he stopped in the United States for the UN General Assembly, where he met 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 promoted by the ultra-right-wing Israeli government, which has escalated in the shadow of the wars in Gaza and Lebanon. Between late July and early August 2024, the army declared its land a military zone, handing it over to settlers. She and her mother Michelle were arrested for ‘resisting’ the illegal expropriation and released after weeks of detention. Since then Alice and her family - who have owned the area for 40 years - have set up a solidarity tent on the site and joined members of the Israeli-Palestinian NGO ‘Combatants for Peace’. The affair is emblematic of the expansionist policy of the Jewish state, which in December approved the increase of settlers in the Golan (Syrian) after the fall of Bashar al-Assad and established a military presence in Gaza and southern Lebanon. According to Palestinian figures in the past year, as a result of the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023, settlers carried out almost 17,000 raids against people, land and property in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Peace Now estimates show that there are half a million settlers - illegal under international law - scattered in 146 settlements and 224 outposts.

REFUGEES (Syria)

Nearly 12 million refugees and displaced persons are the current symbol of one of the most serious humanitarian crises of recent decades. They are the face of the most catastrophic consequences of the war in Syria that flared up in the spring of 2011, which in recent weeks has seen a surprising development with the precipitous flight of Bahsar al-Assad and the collapse of the regime. According to the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), the conflict has turned at least 6.8 million people into internally displaced persons (IDPs) and almost 5.5 million into refugees in neighbouring countries, in particular Turkey, which hosts almost 3.8 million, along with Jordan and Lebanon. After having welcomed Syrians for years in the name of a common ‘Muslim brotherhood’ according to a policy desired by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan himself, today Ankara sees in Assad's ousting the possibility of favouring a substantial repatriation. A plan that also envisages the formation of a ‘buffer zone’ where returning refugees can settle and prevent advances - or attacks - by Kurdish-Syrian militias. Since September, with the start of the Israeli offensive against Hezbollah, Lebanon (1.5 million Syrian refugees) has also seen an increase in refugees returning. Hundreds of thousands have returned to Syria, finding themselves in a nation devastated by years of war and which today, with the rise to power of the rebels, is called upon to redefine a new political and institutional balance within a framework of severe economic crisis.

CARLOS YULO (Philippines)

The bishops of the Philippines also praised the talent, perseverance and faith of Carlos Edriel Poquiz Yulo, the 24-year-old gymnast who on 3 and 4 August won two gold medals in the floor exercise and vault at the Paris Olympic Games, the first Filipino athlete to achieve such a feat. Yulo, who trained for a long time in Japan, was the second Filipino to win a gold medal for the Philippines, after that won by Hidilyn Diaz in weightlifting at the Tokyo 2020 Games (but postponed by a year because of the covid-19 pandemic), signalling a steady growth among sportsmen and women from Asian nations, who are also increasingly present in disciplines and specialities of Western tradition, such as fencing or athletics.

NASURRUDIN UMAR (Indonesia)

For the Catholic Churches of the Asia-Pacific region, 2024 was the year of Pope Francis' strongly desired trip that took him to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore in September. Among the moments that will remain in the memory was the welcome received by the pontiff from the Grand Imam of the Istiqlal Mosque in Jakarta, Nasuruddin Umar. Welcomed after walking through the Tunnel of Friendship - which connects the sacred Muslim site to the nearby Catholic Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption - Francis signed with Nasuruddin Uman a text, the Istiqlal Declaration, which invites religions to work together on two serious crises facing humanity today: the dehumanisation 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 Grand Imam Nasuruddin Umar is also called upon to carry out in person within the Indonesian government of the new President Prabowo Subianto, in which he personally assumed the role of Minister for Religious Affairs in October.

ZHEN XUEBIN (China)

For the Church in China, 2024 was the year of the third renewal of theProvisional Agreement between the People's Republic of China and the Holy See on the appointment of bishops, which arrived in October and was valid for four years. The same days also saw the arrival of what is probably the most significant appointment made so far under this Agreement: Rome and Beijing agreed on the appointment of a coadjutor bishop for Beijing. He is Msgr. Matthew Zhen Xuebin, 54, who now joins Msgr. Joseph Li Shan, the bishop who has led the Catholic community in the Chinese capital since 2007 and is president of the Patriotic Association. The appointment came as a surprise, given that Msgr. Li Shan is just five years older than Msgr. Zhen Xuebin and that about one third of Chinese dioceses still remain without a bishop despite the Agreement. But it points to a prominent role in the probably near future within the Church in China for this Shanxi-born prelate who in the 1990s was among the first Chinese seminarians to have the opportunity to go abroad for training, attending a theology faculty in the United States.

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