Best and worst in 2017: Asia’s powerful leaders won, opposition parties lost, and a Nobel winner fell from grace

Farewell, 2017. As 2018 dawns, we look back at what made headlines and – fitting in this day – lit up Facebook and other social media in Asia in the year that was. From a US presidential visit to Beijing to the 19th Communist Party congress to the assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s half-brother at a Malaysian airport this past February, this past year’s news was all too real.

In 2013, Myanmar democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi’s fall from grace began. The Nobel laureate did little to speak up against the persecution of the Rohingya Muslim minority as she kept her eyes on the prize of leading her majority Buddhist nation. By year’s end in 2017, her fall may well be complete, with more than 600,000 Rohingya having now fled into Bangladesh following rapes, murders and the burning of their villages. Whether a “humanitarian and human rights nightmare”, as described by the UN secretary general, or “ethnic cleansing”, the world has failed to effectively respond to Myanmar’s brutal treatment of an entire people.