An invisible foe indifferent to man-made borders, the world's greatest pandemic in a century triggered fear, anxiety, and sometimes the worst but also the best in humanity. In Italy and elsewhere, we clapped for care workers who appropriately bore the name of front-line workers, heading into battle desperately short of protective equipment and all too often sacrificing their own lives.
In March, Prime Minister Narendra Modi suddenly announced a lockdown, forcing migrant workers, many of them day labourers, to travel across the country to their home states in what some described as the country's greatest migration since the Partition in 1947.
When the virus struck, local authorities played down the danger in China. Angry citizens demanded answers –particularly when a 33-year-old front-line doctor was detained for doubting the statistics. When Li Wenliang himself succumbed to Covid-19 in early February, they were even more outraged.
The unprecedented pandemic led up to an unprecedented US election. Record turnout, thanks in no small part to mail-in and early voting campaigns that went into overdrive for health reasons, saw Democrats Joe Biden and Kamala Harris beat President Donald Trump by 7 million ballots. But the Republican candidate also outperformed his own showing of just four years ago.
With minorities disproportionately affected by Covid-19, built-up rage exploded in late May over the death of 46-year-old George Floyd. His death at the hands of a white Minneapolis police officer – caught on camera – was the result of police being called over a counterfeit $20 bill.
As for France, the country found itself revisiting some of the dark themes of 2015. As the trial of suspected accomplices in the Charlie Hebdo attacks began, the satirical weekly republished controversial cartoons of the prophet, prompting a backlash in the Muslim world and fresh attacks on French soil, including a stabbing spree in a Nice cathedral. The most gruesome attack was the beheading of middle-school teacher Samuel Paty, who was murdered by an 18-year-old Chechen who was angered that Paty had shown students the Mohammed caricatures as part of a class on free speech.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and French President Emmanuel Macron had a war of words in 2020, with Erdogan flexing muscle on the world stage by deploying troops to Libya and gunboats to the oil- and gas-rich waters of the eastern Mediterranean. In the conflict over the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, Erdogan backed Azerbaijan and Russia stepped in to broker a truce that required Armenia accepting Azerbaijani gains in the region – but retreating Armenians razed their own homes as they ceded territory.
Produced by Alessandro Xenos, Juliette Laurain and Imen Mellaz.
