Millions of people began ringing in 2020 with fireworks, dancing and champagne on Wednesday, but Australia’s celebrations were overshadowed by deadly wildfires while protests dampened the festive mood in India.
New Zealanders were among the first to welcome the new year, with fireworks lighting up the night sky over Auckland.
Large crowds thronged Sydney harbor to watch Australia’s famous New Year’s Eve fireworks, even as smoke turned the evening sky in nearby coastal towns blood-red.
Many towns along the country’s eastern coast canceled their fireworks as thousands swarmed to beaches to escape the fires.
Thousands in India also planned to greet the new year with protests, angered by a citizenship law they say will discriminate against Muslims and chip away at the country’s secular constitution.
Sydney decided to press ahead with its fireworks display despite calls by some members of the public for it to be canceled in solidarity with fire-hit areas in New South Wales, of which the city is the capital. “Tonight we expect a million people around the Harbour and a billion people around the world to watch Sydney’s New Year Eve celebrations, which is Australia’s biggest public event,” City of Sydney mayor Clover Moore earlier told reporters.
Some tourists trapped in Australia’s coastal towns posted images of blood-red, smoke-filled skies on social media. One beachfront photograph showed people lying shoulder-to-shoulder on the sand, some wearing gas masks.
The fires have spread across four states, with fronts stretching hundreds of kilometers in some cases. They have killed at least 11 people since October and left many towns and rural areas without electricity and mobile coverage.
Defending the decision not to cancel Sydney’s fireworks and reallocate funds to fire-affected regions, Moore said planning had begun 15 months ago and most of the budget had already been allocated. The event was also a boost to NSW’s economy.
Not everybody welcomed that decision. “Is Sydney seriously still getting fireworks tonight when half our country is on fire,” Twitter user @swiftyshaz13 said.
India has also been gripped by weeks of protests over legislation introduced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government that eases the way for non-Muslim minorities in neighboring Muslim-majority nations such as Pakistan and Bangladesh to gain Indian citizenship.
Protesters planned demonstrations on Tuesday in the capital New Delhi, now in the grip of its second coldest winter in more than a century, the financial capital Mumbai and other cities.
Midnight in London was marked by the chimes of Big Ben, which has been silent during a long restoration, as traditional fireworks are set off over the Thames for the last New Year before Brexit.
It follows a year of political wrangling that led to the resignation of Prime Minister Theresa May and culminated in Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson pledging to leave the European Union on January 31. In Moscow, President Vladimir Putin delivered his annual New Year address, 20 years after he was elevated to the presidency by Boris Yeltsin’s shock resignation in his 1999 end-of-year speech.
Russia will celebrate the new decade over several time zones, with Muscovites flocking to the centre of the capital for fireworks over the Kremlin.
As partygoers embrace the festivities, attention will turn to 2020 and whether it will be as tumultuous as the previous year, which saw an explosion of demonstrations as people demanded an overhaul of entrenched political systems and action on climate change.
