Nepal’s “Gen-Z revolution”

In the last few days, mass youth protests, dubbed the “Gen-Z revolution”, exploded on the streets of Nepal, forcing a political crisis and the resignation of Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli.

The protests began when anger at the wealth and corruption of the political class reached a breaking point. In recent weeks, #nepobaby went viral, exposing the lavish lifestyles of politicians’ children. In one post, a government minister’s son poses next to a Christmas tree made up of Louis Vuitton and Cartier boxes. With per capita income in Nepal at US$1,400 a year, and one in four people living below the poverty line, the boxes cost more money than most will see in a lifetime.

On 4 September, Nepal’s ruling elite announced a ban on 26 social media sites, including WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. This was understood as a naked attempt to stifle criticism of political corruption and provoked protest organisers to call on Nepali youth to take to the streets on Monday, 8 September.

“The whole area from Maithighar all the way to Baneshwor, almost two kilometres, was packed with protesters”, Kisan, a socialist student activist, told Red Flag over the phone a few days into the protests. Tens of thousands of protesters marched on the parliament building, where the police threw tear gas and blasted them with water cannons. When this failed to repel the protesters, they opened fire on the crowd. Social media videos show peaceful protesters being shot with live rounds at close range by police. By the end of the day, nineteen were killed and 400 injured—the bloodiest day of protest in Nepal’s history. A high school student was found dead in the street, still in his school uniform.

Shock waves rippled across the country. Nepal’s political elite had laid bare the cruelty they were prepared to administer to defend their privileges. But the bloodshed did not stop the protests. In Kathmandu, Rupandehi, Biratnagar, Pokhara and Chitwan, protesters tore down police barricades and stormed government buildings, party offices and ministers’ homes. Curfews failed to clear the streets. Protesters chanted, “KP Chore, Desh Chor” (K.P. is a thief, leave the country).

Videos capture the jubilation of the protests. In one, money rains out of the sky as notes are tossed from the window of the energy minister’s home into cheering crowds below. In another, Nepal’s Finance Minister Bishnu Prasad Paudel is stripped to his underwear, chased out of his home and tossed into a nearby river. The same branded shoes that were once boxed inside a nepo baby Christmas tree are now tossed from the balcony of his politician father’s home.

There are many more stories. At the parliament building, police barricades were torn down, and protesters waltzed in. For a few hours, its opulent rooms belonged to youth in ripped jeans and flip-flops. Corrupt officials’ homes were set on fire; the flaming buildings were used as backdrops for TikTok dances.

The scenes are reminiscent of the palace-ransacking that Sri Lanka’s Rajapaksa regime was subjected to by a mass movement three years ago. This connection is not lost on the Nepali protesters. Social media are awash with attempts to share the lessons from Sri Lanka in 2022, Bangladesh last year and the Arab Spring. The main emblem of the protest is “Straw Hat Jolly Roger” from the anime series One Piece, which has proliferated on the streets of Jakarta during the Indonesian protest movement of the past few weeks.

On Monday evening, in a last-ditch effort to wind things back, the government agreed to lift the ban on social media. But it was too late, and protesters returned to the streets for a second day. By mid-morning, Tribuvan International Airport was clogged with private jets and helicopters as government ministers hastily resigned and tried to flee the country. Finally, just one day after the youth protest began, K.P. Oli stepped down as prime minister.

Part of the reason the government was toppled so quickly was its already unstable position—there has been a whole series of short-lived governments since the monarchy was overthrown in 2006. “People’s frustrations had been growing for a long time”, Kisan said. “For the last few decades, it’s basically been a game of musical chairs where three men, K.P. Sharma Oli (Communist Party of Nepal—United Marxist-Leninist), Sher Bahadur Deuba (Nepali Congress) and Prachanda (Communist Party of Nepal—Maoist Centre) have been in the premiership over and over again.”

Inequality has accelerated under the successive leadership of these parties, exacerbated in recent years by growing unemployment. Nepal’s 20 percent youth unemployment rate has forced millions to seek construction or domestic work in the Gulf states, Malaysia and South Korea. According to Kisan, “There’s a whole age group of people who are completely missing in the villages because they’re forced to go overseas to be modern slaves in the Gulf. They earn about 30,000 rupees [about US$210] a month and send 15,000 back home as remittances. It’s poverty wages, but they don’t have a choice because the conditions in Nepal are just so bad”.

Meanwhile, Nepal’s leaders—who drape themselves in “Communist” or “Maoist” colouring—have lined their pockets with taxes collected on these remittance payments, which make up around 30 percent of the country’s GDP. This is in addition to the open grift and corruption that goes on every day. According to the government itself, an estimated 15-50 percent of its total budget is embezzled by contractors, ministers and officers.

K.P. Oli’s swift resignation surprised many who took part in the movement. He left behind a political vacuum that was soon filled by ex-Chief Justice Sushila Karki. Nepal’s small right-wing monarchist minority tried to seize the moment to argue the king should be reinstated, but this clearly didn’t fly with the youth protesters.

According to Kisan, most of the leading “Gen-Z revolution” activists support Karki forming an interim government until fresh elections are held. But shifting the deckchairs of the establishment will hardly resolve the serious issues facing the majority of one of the world’s poorest countries.

There are other dangers. The Nepali army quickly imposed itself as the “law and order” enforcer and the mediator in leadership negotiations with “Gen-Z” reps. The generals could try to use this moment to gain more power for themselves. Similarly, it’s possible that the more right-wing Nepali parties could receive a boost in future elections in the absence of a strong left-wing political alternative.

Much remains up in the air, but Nepal’s youth are fed up with the system of poverty, oppression and inequality. One impassioned student protester made this clear when speaking to Al Jazeera on Tuesday:

“To our international friends we say—the prime minister’s resignation is not enough. Tomorrow they could easily form another coalition with all the national parties gathering around the same table again. But we are here to break all of that, to break the cycle. We are going to break that table.”