Year in pictures: Momentous political upheaval, grim anniversaries – and leaving past behind
Images taken by BenarNews photographers show democracy was tested to its limit in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines.
BenarNews staff 2024.12.26 Bangkok, Dhaka, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur and Manila
Police try to push back students demonstrating in Dhaka against quotas in some public service jobs, July 11, 2024. At the time, around 30 university protesters had been injured, student groups said, alleging that police and activists from the ruling party’s youth wing had been attacking them in various parts of the country.
[Jibon Ahmed/BenarNews]
UPDATED at 12:54 p.m. ET on 2025-01-08
Editor’s note: Reader discretion is advised. This article contains graphic imagery.
From a historic but deadly mass uprising to the landslide electoral victory of an ex-general accused of human rights abuses, BenarNews photographers captured moments from the frontlines of major news events in Bangladesh and Southeast Asia in 2024.
The 15-year reign of Sheikh Hasina in Bangladesh came to an ignominious end on Aug. 5, when the prime minister fled the country following a mass uprising in which more than 1,400 people were killed. Critics said the student-led revolt was an indictment of her authoritarian rule.
In Indonesia, Prabowo Subianto, a former army general seen as a symbol of the country’s authoritarian era, won the February presidential election along with running mate Gibran Rakabuming Raka, the then-president’s eldest son.
Indonesian electoral watchdog groups said the election was rife with fraud, meddling and favoritism, and was the worst since the country’s democratic transition 25 years ago.
In the neighboring Philippines, the political honeymoon of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and Vice-President Sara Duterte effectively ended, capped by the latter openly warning last month that the president would be assassinated should she be targeted and killed in a plot.
December brought Filipinos some good news, though, after Jakarta repatriated Mary Jane Veloso, who had been on Indonesian death row on a drugs conviction since 2010.
Political upheaval continued unabated in Thailand after the Constitutional Court in August ordered the disbandment of the progressive Move Forward Party, which had won the biggest share of seats in last year’s general election.
Thailand’s north, meanwhile, experienced the worst floods in decades, starting mid-year, as overflowing rivers claimed more than 50 lives and left thousands displaced.
The year also marked the grim 10th anniversary of two air tragedies linked to Malaysia – the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines’ flight 370 and the downing of flight MH17 in eastern Ukraine, then controlled by Russian-backed rebels.
BANGLADESH
Police point guns at protesters during clashes in Dhaka’s Jatrabari area, July 18, 2024. By then, student protests against then-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her government had spread nationwide after she equated those who wanted to end job quotas for the families of war heroes with Pakistan army collaborators in the 1971 independence war. [Mehedi Rana/BenarNews]A rickshaw driver transports 17-year-old student Golam Nafiz, after he was fatally shot in Dhaka’s Farmgate area during anti-government protests, Aug. 4, 2024. [Jibon Ahmed/Benar News]Protesters wave Bangladesh flags as they celebrate on Aug. 5, 2024, after the army chief announced that Hasina had fled the country a day after at least 98 lives were lost in what was the deadliest day of the unrest. [Sudeepto Salam/BenarNews]
INDONESIA
Police fire tear gas shells on Aug. 22, 2024, to quell demonstrators in Jakarta, who like many citizens nationwide were protesting against a bill they said would entrench the political influence of the then-outgoing President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo. Days earlier, the Constitutional Court revised requirements for a political party to nominate a candidate in elections for regional heads, a move that disqualified one of Jokowi’s sons from contesting. Two days after the ruling, lawmakers were set to vote on a hastily drafted bill to undo these revisions, but eventually dropped it in the face of mass protests. [Eko Siswano Toyudho/BenarNews]Then-Presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto (front, center) delivers a speech during an event in Jakarta, on Feb. 14, 2024, after quick-count results indicated that he and his running mate were headed for a landslide victory. [Eko Siswono Toyudho/BenarNews]Pope Francis (seated), the head of the Catholic Church, kisses the hand of Grand Imam Nasaruddin Umar of Indonesia's Istiqlal Mosque, in Jakarta on Sept. 5, 2024, after the two religious leaders called for a deeper understanding between faiths and collective efforts toward global peace. Francis was the third pontiff to visit Indonesia and the first since 1989 when his predecessor John Paul II visited for five days. [Eko Siswono Toyudho/BenarNews]Then-Vice-Presidential candidate Gibran Rakabuming Raka (right) pretends to search for a lost “answer” after a response by one of his opponents, Mohammad Mahfud MD (not in the frame), as the third candidate, Muhaimin Iskandar, looks on, during a debate in Jakarta on Jan. 21, 2024. Gibran, the eldest son of then-President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, was criticized as “disrespectful and arrogant.” [Eko Siswono Toyudho/BenarNews]
PHILIPPINES
Philippine Vice-President Sara Duterte, whose political relationship with President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. hit rock bottom this year, gestures while attending a House of Representatives committee hearing on her alleged misuse of state funds, in Quezon City, Metro Manila, Nov. 25, 2024. [Gerard Carreon/BenarNews]Filipina Mary Jane Veloso (center), who was on Indonesian death row for a drug trafficking conviction, hugs her father at the Correctional Institution for Women in Manila where she was taken to after arriving in the Philippine capital following her repatriation by Jakarta on Dec. 18, 2024. Veloso has consistently maintained she was duped into carrying the drugs. [Gerard Carreon/BenarNews]Bud Datu Mountain is covered in a misty fog, as seen from a boat near the Jolo port in the southern Philippines, Nov. 30, 2024. Members of the once notorious Abu Sayyaf militant group used to hide away in the mountain and its surrounding areas, but now many of them in the region who quit militancy have turned to farming to make a living, as part of a government-sponsored rehabilitation program. [Mark Navales/BenarNews]Philippine megachurch leader Apollo Quiboloy (second from left) is escorted by police personnel as he arrives in court for his arraignment in Pasig city, Metro Manila, Sept. 13, 2024. Authorities arrested the spiritual adviser of former President Rodrigo Duterte, who had been on the run, for alleged sex and trafficking crimes. [Jojo Riñoza/BenarNews]
THAILAND
Pita Limjaroenrat, the former leader of Thailand’s now-defunct Move Forward Party, speaks to reporters at the Government Complex Bangkok on Aug. 7, before attending a Constitutional Court hearing set to pronounce the verdict in a case calling for the party’s dissolution. Thailand has a history of such court-ordered dissolutions of parties, with at least 17 disbanded since 2007. [Tananchai Keawsowattana/Thai News Pix/via BenarNews]Rescuers in Pathum Thani, a northern suburb of Bangkok, crowd into a burned bus to look for survivors after the vehicle crashed into a road barrier and erupted in flames, killing more than 20 students and teachers who were on a field trip. The tragedy ignited calls for comprehensive safety reforms in public transportation in a country that has among the highest traffic fatality rates in the world. [Tananchai Keawsowattana/Thai News Pix/BenarNews]Villagers in Thailand’s northern region walk through meters-high water during the unprecedented and prolonged floods that began mid-August when Typhoon Yagi and other climate change-related factors caused a much wetter monsoon than usual, leaving scores dead and thousands displaced over the course of two-and-a-half months, Aug. 30, 2024. [Nava Sangthong/BenarNews]“Crocodile doctor” Sompop “Max” Ratdee kisses one of the reptiles as part of his performance in a crocodile wrestling show held at the Samut Prakan Crocodile Farm and Zoo in Samut Prakan province, Aug. 24, 2024. Established in 1950, the farm is now a tourist attraction that has grown to become one of the world’s largest, housing more than 60,000 freshwater and saltwater crocodiles. [Watcharawit Phudork/Benarnews]
MALAYSIA
A member of an Islamic committee checks for the crescent moon from the top of the Kuala Lumpur Tower on March 10, 2024, to determine the start of Ramadan, the Islamic holy month of fasting, which began a day later in Malaysia. [S. Mahfuz/BenarNews]Parents of Zulfarhan Osman Zulkarnain bow in gratitude at the Palace of Justice in Putrajaya on July 23, 2024, after the Malaysian Court of Appeal sentenced six former National Defense University students to death for his murder in 2017. Zulfarhan, a naval officer cadet who was 21 when he was killed, was beaten and tortured with a hot steam iron all over his body by the convicts, the judge said. [S. Mahfuz/BenarNews]A Feb. 9, 2024, portrait of Muhammad Asrul Abdul Kadir, 38, a former transgender woman from Malaysia’s Kedah state who has taken on the task of making coffins and headstones for LGBTQ people, who are often not given a proper burial because their families have shunned them. Muhammad Asrul, who resumed life as a man in 2016, said he was frequently summoned by hospitals to collect and bury the bodies of HIV or AIDS patients. [S. Mahfuz/BenarNews]Puzzle pieces bearing the names of passengers and crew of Malaysia Airlines flight 370 are displayed during a ceremony on March 3, 2024, in Subang Jaya, Malaysia, held to mark the 10th anniversary of the plane’s disappearance with 239 aboard, which remains a mystery. This month, Malaysia agreed to resume the search for the wreckage of the plane that went missing on March 8, 2014. [S. Mahfuz/BenarNews]
CORRECTION: A photo caption in an earlier version incorrectly implied that Bangladeshi student Golam Nafiz was already dead when photographed in the back of the rickshaw. He in fact died later of his gunshot wound.
Police try to push back students demonstrating in Dhaka against quotas in some public service jobs, July 11, 2024. At the time, around 30 university protesters had been injured, student groups said, alleging that police and activists from the ruling party’s youth wing had been attacking them in various parts of the country.
