Nepal’s Army Takes Back Kathmandu’s Streets After Two Days of Protests

“Our generation likes to slay,” said Tanuja Pandey, a Gen Z protest organizer and recent university graduate, using a slang term for looking your best. “It’s our secret weapon.”

But, as three protesters who took part in the mass rallies in the capital, Kathmandu, recounted, the vibe changed.

As the largely leaderless youth movement marched toward the Everest Hotel, men arrived on motorcycles and in trucks, waving the Nepali flag with its twin triangles. They yelled extremist slogans and rushed past barricades to restricted zones. They did not appear to slay.

The burning and looting started soon after, the three Gen Z protesters said, shocking a movement that had expressly warned its tens of thousands of followers on social media not to act violently, even as at least 19 protesters were killed on Monday after security forces opened fire.

The three protesters did not want to be identified because of the tense security situation.

By Tuesday, some of the young protesters, who had been galvanized by a government ban on social media, stayed off the streets. But the capital had descended into chaos. The Parliament burned, as did the Supreme Court. Hotels were set on fire in a city that depends on adventure and spiritual tourism. The airport was closed because of smoke obscuring the runway. Homes and offices of government officials were attacked.

“Killing people, demolishing things, vandalizing, looting, this is not our generation,” Ms. Pandey said. “We wanted progress, not to push things back by 10 years at least because everything has been dismantled.”

Ms. Pandey said that she and other Gen Z protesters met with the Army chief, Gen. Ashok Raj Sigdel, on Tuesday evening, to try to convince him that the widespread arson attacks in Kathmandu did not come from their ranks. Meetings between student organizers and military officials continued on Wednesday, two participants said.

The Gen Z protesters face another fundamental challenge: trying to articulate a unified message to advance their demands, even as organizers shy away from publicly identifying themselves. On Wednesday, Facebook and Instagram accounts that identified themselves as representing Nepal’s Gen Z protesters urged people to clean up litter on the streets or stay home away from trouble. There were few reports of further damage on Wednesday.

Ms. Pandey, the daughter of a teacher and a homemaker from eastern Nepal, studied environmental, gender and criminal law in Kathmandu. She had great aspirations, part of a new wave of educated youth eager to use their professional skills. But finding a job is tough in Nepal. Many of the offers Ms. Pandey received were for no more than $140 a month, she said, hardly enough to cover city living.

Three other university graduates who participated in the protests said that this gulf between their expectations and the job market reality left them in despair. A brain drain has deprived the country of some of its most educated citizens. At the same time, conspicuous consumption and casual corruption make the nation’s wealth gap clear.

Ms. Pandey said that her family has been targeted for her role in the protests.

“I hope one day they will be proud of me,” she said of her parents, her voice catching in a sob. “Because now, everyone blames us, our generation, for having caused something we did not do.”

Many young protesters were driven to overturn the government’s social media ban, which has since been rescinded. One protest organizer, a university student in Kathmandu, said that he never imagined that this discrete goal would leave his hometown so wounded.

Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli, whose house was also set on fire, resigned to take responsibility for the killing of the 19 protesters. No group has taken responsibility for the destruction in Kathmandu.

“All we wanted to do was fight against the corrupt system,” Ms. Pandey said. “But we could not control the situation, and now this collective trauma will be embedded in our memories forever.”

In Kathmandu, where protesters set fire to the Parliament building and residences belonging to the president, prime minister and other leaders, the mayor did not join the demonstrators. But he did back their calls for the prime minister’s resignation, urged protesters not to destroy property and told his hundreds of thousands of followers on social media that he was on the side of the “spontaneous movement” known in Nepal as the Gen Z protests.

“Dear Gen Z, the resignation of your murderer has come,” he said on social media on Tuesday, referring to the former prime minister, K.P. Sharma Oli. “Now be restrained!!”

He then offered advice.

“Be ready to lead the country. Stay ready to hold talks with the army chief,” the mayor posted on Facebook. “But remember, Parliament should be dissolved before the talks.”

After unrest that left 22 people dead over two days, the Gen Z protesters have called for the formation of an interim government led by a former chief justice of Nepal’s Supreme Court and early elections to fill the political void. Nepal’s Constitution allows the president — who remains in office — to dissolve Parliament upon the prime minister’s recommendation. After Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli and some of his cabinet ministers resigned on Tuesday, the remaining government has in effect become a caretaker, and the Army has deployed to the streets of Kathmandu to impose order.

Mr. Shah is known as a political outsider, which has helped him get to where he is now.

Running as an independent, he won the mayor’s race by a landslide, trouncing major-party rivals. His win, analysts said at the time, inspired other young people in a country where many political leaders are twice the age of the average voter.

As a rapper, his lyrics about Nepal’s economic problems and brain drain — millions of the country’s people work overseas — struck a chord, and his signature black blazer and jeans, paired with square black sunglasses, made him recognizable on the city’s streets. Since taking office, he has leaned on his experience as a structural engineer; his government has opened local health clinics and given high schools money to expand vocational training.

One of his major promises, to provide enough clean drinking water for the capital’s residents, has been more difficult to achieve. On Monday, his office distributed drinking water to demonstrators before the protests turned violent.

Photos of the Kathmandu District Attorney’s Office, where protesters set fire to office furniture in front of the building, showed damage to some windows.

Security forces were largely absent during the day on Tuesday. But by early Wednesday morning, Nepali Army soldiers and heavily armed police officers were deployed in the streets of Kathmandu, the country’s capital, encircling groups of protesters and raising fears of another deadly crackdown.

The army said in a statement that it intended to assume responsibility for law and order starting at 10 p.m. Tuesday. It called upon citizens to cease all acts of arson and looting. In formal language, the army’s high command promised that its troops would take to the streets to protect the country’s public and private properties.

The actions of the Nepali security forces have drawn condemnation from human rights groups. The United Nations human rights office said it was “shocked” by the killing of protesters and demanded a prompt investigation. The U.N.’s office in Nepal also warned the authorities that all law enforcement responses must remain “in line with international human rights standards.”

Among the leaders who have resigned since the protests began was the home minister, Ramesh Lekhak, who said he took moral responsibility for Monday’s deadly crackdown.

Poverty rates have plummeted over the past three decades in Nepal, as the young democracy emerged from a civil war that lasted from 1996 to 2006. But many Nepalis, including the protesters out on the streets this week, have long been angry about severe unemployment, political corruption and a small number of elite Nepalis accumulating vast wealth for their children.

Experts say that, just as corruption among Nepal’s leaders has often gone unchecked, the country’s security forces have often been allowed to act with impunity.

Historically in Nepal, “there is very much an expectation that security forces will break the law,” said Rumela Sen, a lecturer at Columbia University whose research focuses on political violence in South Asia.

“The general understanding is that if you get into any kind of confrontation with anybody who is remotely associated with the army, there is no chance for the common man to escape that encounter without being harmed,” Ms. Sen said.

“The fear of uniform,” she added, “is deeply ingrained.”

Much of that fear dates back to the civil war, when security forces were accused of using brutal tactics against a Maoist insurgency and of carrying out enforced disappearances, for which human rights groups say there has been little accountability.

Security forces, including the Nepali police, “have always only been held accountable to their political masters,” said Ramesh Shrestha, an expert who has studied youth-led political violence in Nepal. “These people have always been protected.”

If the Nepali government fails to hold its forces responsible for the most recent killings, there should be broader consequences, said Meenakshi Ganguly, the deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. Nepal is the largest contributor of military and police personnel to U.N. peacekeeping operations — a relationship that should be reassessed unless Nepali leaders take “serious action,” Ms. Ganguly said.

But with the resignation of Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli on Tuesday, and with Parliament and the Supreme Court still ablaze as of Wednesday, it was unclear which leaders remained.

Before becoming a republic in 2008, Nepal was ruled by a Hindu monarchy for nearly 250 years. The country’s first attempt at introducing a democratic political system dates to 1951, when the Nepali monarch established a cabinet system that created political parties. But a constitution that was put in place in 1959 was soon abolished by the next monarch, and for the next half-century Nepal teetered between an autocracy and a constitutional monarchy.

From 1996 to 2006, the monarchy was locked in a power struggle with Maoist rebels, who pushed to end royal rule. The 10-year civil war caused the deaths of more than 17,000 people. In 2007, Nepal’s government finally agreed to abolish the monarchy, and the next year, the country was declared a democratic republic.

Nepal has more than 100 ethnic groups and spoken languages, scores of castes and a total population of approximately 30 million people, making political consensus difficult.

Since 2008, Nepal has cycled through a series of leaders, leaving the country in an extended state of political uncertainty. Corruption ran rampant through Nepal’s government, with officials committing bribery and extortion.

K.P. Sharma Oli, a leader in the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist), took over as prime minister in 2015, the first of several terms as premier. In his most recent ascension to the prime minister’s office, in 2024, Mr. Oli forged a deal with the Nepali Congress, the largest party in Parliament, to form a new government with him at the helm. Under the deal, the Nepali Congress and the Communist Party of Nepal agreed to lead the government on a rotating basis until 2027, when the current session of Parliament was supposed to conclude.

Mr. Oli resigned on Tuesday. It is not clear who will replace him and if anyone was in charge of the country.

It is not clear if these images were real or fabricated, but they have come to symbolize the corruption that many Nepalis say has widened inequality and enriched officials and their relatives.

The outrage has been one of the drivers of the protests, which were triggered by a social media ban but were fueled by years of resentment against those in power.

As part of Nepal’s #nepokids social media trend, users upload videos and posts to TikTok and X that purport to show the children of Nepali political figures on luxury vacations and wearing fancy clothing, juxtaposed with scenes meant to show the everyday struggles of ordinary Nepalis.

Among the most frequently shared images was a photo claiming to show a son of a minister posing with boxes labeled Louis Vuitton and Cartier, arranged into a Christmas tree. Another video stitched photos the user claimed was the son of a former judge dining at high-end restaurants and posing next to a Mercedes car.

“Thousands of such videos are trending across Nepal’s digital ecosystem,” said Raqib Naik, the executive director of the Center for the Study of Organized Hate, a watchdog group based in Washington that tracks extremism and misinformation online in South Asia and its diasporas.

The contrast “between elite privilege and everyday hardship struck a deep chord with Gen Z and quickly became a central narrative driving the movement,” he said.

Nepal’s “nepo kids” trend, using an abbreviated version of nepotism, is similar to the popular concept in the West, where that term and “nepo babies” is used to refer to the privileged children of celebrities and other public figures.

In many posts, images of those so-called “nepo kids” are interspersed with images depicting the struggles faced by ordinary and poor Nepalis, expressing a widespread sense in Nepal that the affluence of the country’s political class has come at the expense of the wider population.

Transparency International, an independent nonprofit, has ranked Nepal as one of the most corrupt countries in Asia. Despite frequent scandals, typically involving collusion among elected politicians and supposedly independent officials, very few accusations have resulted in successful prosecutions.

For example, a parliamentary probe revealed that at least $71 million was embezzled in the construction of an international airport in the city of Pokhara. And in another case, Nepali leaders were caught collecting money from young people aspiring to find employment in the United States under the cover of refugee status that was intended for ethnic Nepalis who had been forcibly deported from neighboring Bhutan.

In particular, young people have recoiled at a small number of elite Nepalis seen to be accumulating vast estates for their children, with many calling for the state to open investigations into how they were purchased.

The government’s short-lived ban on social media further antagonized protesters, who saw it as an attempt to control criticism of the inequalities they continue to protest against.

Bhadra Sharma and Alex Travelli contributed reporting.

In Nepal, the ban set off the worst unrest in decades, unleashing pent-up outrage over corruption and economic inequality. By Tuesday morning, the Nepali government had reversed course, reinstating access to all 26 of the platforms blocked last week, including Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and WeChat.

Nayana Prakash, a research fellow at the Chatham House research institute in London who studies the use of technology in South Asia, said that the suddenness of the ban in Nepal took people by surprise, whereas internet censorship is more common in India and Pakistan.

“This is quite new to Nepal,” Dr. Prakash said. While many countries have either banned TikTok or are discussing it, restricting access to platforms like LinkedIn and Reddit “goes quite a lot further,” severely curtailing people’s ability to find jobs or network outside of Nepal, she said. The government in Nepal also tried to impose a much broader ban than exists in India, she said.

Social media is a critical tool in Nepal, where people rely on the apps to receive money and stay in touch with family and friends abroad. Businesses also use platforms like WhatsApp to operate.

India, the second biggest internet user in the world after China, with a population of 1.4 billion, has a much easier time getting tech companies to comply with government restrictions because they do not want to risk losing access to such a big market, Dr. Prakash said.

In contrast, many social media companies did not comply with Nepal’s new registration requirements. “Nepal doesn’t have the same level of political or commercial clout to make these tech companies fall into line,” Dr. Prakash said. “Companies can’t really afford to get on the wrong side of India, and India is well aware of that.”

Around the world, internet freedom has declined for the 14th year in a row, with governments restricting access to social media platforms in at least 25 countries, according to a report published last year by Freedom House, a nonprofit organization that supports transparency and democracy. The Indian government censors online content and sometimes restricts access to social media platforms or orders tech companies to remove certain content.

Jon Roozenbeek, a lecturer in psychology at the University of Cambridge who focuses on misinformation and authoritarianism, said that India and other countries have gained public support for restricting some internet access by framing it as a nationalistic policy. That did not happen in Nepal.

He added that Nepal lacks the leverage of large countries like India. “Google and Meta and others were like ‘OK, see ya. We don’t care enough about Nepal,’” Dr. Roozenbeek said.

Here are countries where young people have played a leading role in recent protests.

Indonesia

Protesters in Indonesia, the largest country in Southeast Asia, have held demonstrations in recent weeks against rising unemployment, inflation and economic inequality.

The All-Indonesia Students’ Union has played an organizing role in the protests, which have involved thousands of people in the capital, Jakarta, and other cities on the island of Java and elsewhere. At least four people, including a motorcycle taxi driver, were killed in the unrest in late August, which prompted the authorities to deploy the navy marine corps to bring order.

Demonstrators have demanded that the government cancel the monthly housing allowances that lawmakers receive, which many in the country see as lavish.

The president, Prabowo Subianto, said in recent days that the country’s House of Representatives had agreed to some policy changes and said he acknowledged the “genuine aspirations of the public.” Allowances for national lawmakers would be cut and a moratorium imposed on their expensive overseas trips, he said.

Bangladesh

Student-led protests last year forced Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to leave office and flee the country after 15 years in power.

Nearly 1,400 people were killed in a security crackdown, but it failed to stop demonstrators from eventually reaching Ms. Hasina’s official residence in the capital, Dhaka.

The demonstrators’ aim was to rebuild Bangladesh as a more equitable and less corrupt democracy. Since Ms. Hasina left office, an interim government has led Bangladesh without a prime minister.

The success of the protests, which have been associated with Gen Z, has been closely watched around the region.

Sri Lanka

Months of protests against President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, whose family has dominated Sri Lanka’s politics for years, forced him to resign in 2022. The protesters accused him of corruption and mismanagement, which they said had ruined the island nation’s economy and caused shortages of fuel, medicine and food.

Young people were central to the demonstrations and built a protest camp along the scenic Galle Face neighborhood at the heart of the capital, Colombo, with protesters insisting they would not go home until the Rajapaksas left the government.

The country relies heavily on the remittances that an estimated two million workers abroad send home. The social media ban had the effect of isolating families from their faraway breadwinners.

The government repealed the ban on Tuesday after protests, and Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli and other ministers later resigned. But the unrest continued, as protesters set fire to government offices and to politicians’ homes.

Unemployment and Inequity

The country’s biggest slow-burning crisis centers on jobs. Getting one is a herculean task in Nepal, a mountainous nation of 30 million sandwiched between India and China. According to the Nepal Living Standard Survey published by the National Statistics Office in 2024, the unemployment rate was 12.6 percent.

Those figures tend to understate the severity of the problem. They represent only participants in the formal economy, leaving out a majority of Nepalis, who work without officially reported jobs, mostly in farming. And the unemployment is heavily concentrated among younger adults.

Finding no opportunities at home, more than a thousand young men and women leave the country every day to serve long-term contracts in the oil-rich countries of the Persian Gulf and Malaysia. Tens of thousands work in India as seasonal migrant laborers. Government data show that more than 741,000 left the country last year, mainly to find work in construction or agriculture.

The rest of Nepal relies heavily on the remittances those workers abroad send home. In 2024, the $11 billion they sent accounted for more than 26 percent of the country’s economy. That money buys food and medicine and sends children to school in Nepal.

Deep Corruption

If there were one thing to blame for this cluster of economic problems, many Nepalis, especially those active in this Gen Z protest, would point to corruption. They recoil at the spectacle of a small number of elite Nepalis accumulating vast estates for their children. Transparency International, an independent nonprofit focused on holding governments accountable, has ranked Nepal as one of the most corrupt countries in Asia.

A steady drumbeat of scandals, typically involving collusion among elected politicians and supposedly independent officials, feeds this resentment. Very few accusations result in successful prosecutions.

For example, a parliamentary probe revealed that at least $71 million was embezzled in the construction of an international airport in the city of Pokhara. Loans from the Export-Import Bank of China evaporated in a nexus among officials, elected politicians and Chinese construction companies. The probe recommended further investigation and specific actions against the accused, including the director general of civil aviation. Still, no one was booked.

In another case, Nepali leaders were caught collecting money from young people aspiring to find employment in the United States under the cover of refugee status that was intended for ethnic Nepalis who had been forcibly deported from neighboring Bhutan. Fake documents gave the unemployed Nepali nationals the identities of displaced Bhutanese. Politicians from all parties were named in the ensuing investigations, but only members of the opposition were charged.

Ordinary Nepalis are aware of the ways they could benefit from a better-funded government. Health and education expenses are high. Farmers lack critical fertilizer during rice-planting seasons. Inflation makes it tough for anyone to survive in Kathmandu, the capital, where young people move to pursue higher education and jobs.

An Entrenched Elite

Democracy was hard won in Nepal, but it has not met the aspirations that sent protesters to the streets this week. Many of the Gen Z protesters are fixated on the son and the daughter-in-law of former Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba. They bitterly post images of them and other politicians’ children flaunting lavish lifestyles.

Ever since the new constitution came into effect in 2015, three leaders have rotated as head of the government: Mr. Oli, Pushpa Kamal Dahal and Mr. Deuba. For younger people, this electoral game of thrones, in which each prime minister’s tenure has lasted just a year or two, is infuriating.

Mr. Oli, the current prime minister, is an avid social media user. People close to him say he personally reads the comments that pile up under the videos he posts. Other Nepali leaders are fixated on social media as well, though they may not use the platforms much. In November 2023, Mr. Dahal, who was then prime minister, banned TikTok, in order, he said, “to restore social harmony.” It was Mr. Oli, when he returned as prime minister, who lifted that ban, nine months later.