As 2020 draws to a close, the COVID-19 pandemic is far from abating. Infections have spiked again in numerous countries, and the emergence of a new, more contagious strain of the SARS-COV-2 virus is causing renewed stress among over-stretched exhausted doctors, nurses and health-care providers on the frontlines. The much-awaited vaccines have started to be rolled out in rich countries but may well be out of reach for most of the world’s people for several months and even years.

In Asia, however, the dominant mood is defiance—not despair. Braving the risk of infection and challenging emergency laws that prohibit mass protests and severely curtail freedom of speech, people in India, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines and other countries have been gathering over the past several months to defend participatory democracy, justice and peoples’ rights, and build resistance against increasing autocracy and corporate power.

In Thailand, university students have reignited popular anger against the military government that cornered a victory in the 2019 general election through legal subterfuge. The government has engineered the dissolution of popular opposition parties and has persistently persecuted democracy and human rights advocates using lèse-majesté, national security and sedition laws. Combining strategic, peaceful street mobilisations with protest art, songs, videos and popular culture references, the students have shown remarkable courage and resolve, courted arrests and won broad support for their demands inside Thailand and abroad.

In Indonesia, thousands of workers and students have organised against an omnibus law that drastically undercuts workers’ rights and undermines environmental standards for investment projects in a bid to attract foreign investment. Despite their far-reaching implications, drafts of the law were not made public. Although the law has been passed, resistance against it continues, with workers’ unions, student associations and other civil society organisations working in concert to roll it back.

In the Philippines, emergency decrees and quarantine rules have not been able to prevent protests by workers, peasants, students, women, indigenous peoples and human rights advocates against escalating violence by the police and military against civilians, the government’s poor responses to COVID-19, natural disasters and their economic fall-out, and the government’s efforts to criminalise dissent through red-tagging and the anti-terror law.

In India, hundreds of thousands of smallholder farmers from various states have gathered around New Delhi demanding the repeal of three agricultural laws that enable the privatisation of agricultural produce procurement and contract farming, and undermine public stockholding of food and minimum support prices for agricultural produce. The central government’s responses have ranged from attempts to violently disperse the protests and maligning the protesting farmers as dissidents and anti-national, to claiming that the protests are a ploy by opposition parties while manufacturing support for the farm bills through its own political base.

The farmers have held firm in their demands, kept all political parties at arms-length and set up camp in near-freezing temperatures. They have been joined by workers’ unions, student associations, civil society organisations, writers, artists, musicians and small-scale traders’ associations. Across the country, coalitions of diverse organisations are organising events and demonstrations to build public support for the farmers’ demands. The protests against the farm laws have now broadened to boycott campaigns against two of the largest corporate houses in India—Ambani and Adani—both of which are close to the ruling regime and are expected to gain tremendously from the agricultural laws.

In the final edition of our COVID Bulletin for the year, we present a combination of new articles and articles published in previous bulletins, which highlight mobilisations against injustice, oppression and human rights violations. Also included are links to music and videos calling for unity and solidarity with movements to build equal, peaceful and just societies.

In Solidarity,

Focus on the Global South