Citizens in Kathmandu torched Parliament, the Supreme Court, media houses, banks, political offices, and ministers’ residences, with mobs seizing police weapons and parading through the city.
Prime Minister KP Oli, President Ram Chandra Poudel, and Home Minister Ramesh Lekhak resigned within 36 hours amid the violent youth-led uprising, while ex-PM Sher Bahadur Deuba and his wife were lynched and other leaders targeted.
: With Parliament possibly facing dissolution, speculation of military intervention, and demands for anti-corruption commissions, Nepal stands at a crossroads as citizens vow to prevent political hijacking of their movement.
Enraged citizens have turned their pent-up anger against corrupt politicians into uncontrollable violent action, which has carried on throughout the second day of protests in Kathmandu.
Mobs have broken into and torched the Parliament building, media houses, banks, the Supreme Court, government offices, hotels, cars, showrooms, political parties' offices and the homes and quarters of ministers as they tried to flee via helicopter. Plumes of black smoke rose across the valley, turning the air acrid.
The parliament building was completely ablaze at the time of writing on Tuesday night, charred by the flames. Citizens thronged inside the building complex and its compound, carrying out furniture, which they then threw into the flames to keep the fire going. Around that flame, youths danced, carrying Nepali flags, fire extinguishers and a pair of broken hand-cuffs.
“One for Oli, one for Prachanda,” says a protester, and the frenzied crowd cheers.
Gen-Z protesters have confiscated police batons, vests and hats and are currently striding through the main roads of Baneshwor, the toniest part of Kathmandu. One youth in a traffic post facetiously pretends to direct traffic in front of the Parliament building. Motorcyclists without helmets on and with more than one passenger are riding deliriously on the streets, beeping their horns and shouting.
Ex-Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba and his wife have been lynched. Ex-Prime Minister Jhalanath Khanal’s residence has been set on fire and his wife perished in the flames.
The Finance Minister was stripped and kicked through the streets this afternoon. Police chiefs have been shot with their own guns and their bodies dismembered with the iconic Nepali Khukri blade.
The primary chants of the protesters are calling Prime Minister KP Oli a "burglar" and demanding his exile. Technically, he is ex-Prime Minister Oli now. In less than 36 hours, the youthful upsurge resulted in Oli’s resignation.
President Ram Chandra Poudel has resigned too, as has Home Minister Ramesh Lekhak.
It is unclear what will happen next. There are rumors of Parliament being dissolved, of the military stepping in to stabilise the situation, a neutral interim chief, and commissions to investigate corruption and to amend the Constitution.
For now, the mood is jubilant, wary and of shock. So much has been destroyed that things simply will not go on the way they had. Nepal will need to start from scratch. And citizens are vigilant about not letting the movement get hijacked.
The scale and pace of the protests are a stark reminder of the true reality of democracy: that it is, after all, rule by the people. That the elected leaders are supposed to serve the people and not live luxuriously off of tax money.For too long, despair had been building up over the corruption and incompetence in the government. It was commonly believed that the political parties had 'gamed the system'. No matter which party won an election, the same three leaders would figure out how to share the prime-ministership between themselves. Budgets were never seriously planned or implemented. Nothing was run efficiently. Nothing worked reliably. Forty per cent of the country’s frustrated youth have migrated abroad to labour or to study.
The government, it seemed, just did what it wanted how it wanted.
Recently, it decided to arbitrarily ban social media apps such as Instagram, X, WhatsApp and Messenger, unless they ‘registered’ themselves in Nepal, a bureaucratic exercise that would have added nothing and perhaps even led to censorship as per a new ‘Social Media’ bill.
This decision was wholly unpopular. It had a huge impact on daily life. Almost every Nepali has close family abroad whom they communicated with through these platforms. Many Nepali businesses have come to depend on social media to market and sell their products. Most of all, it just seemed so absurd that the government could interfere so widely with people’s lives off of so fragile a basis.
This ban completely backfired. People thronged TikTok, one of the few apps that had registered and was hence allowed to function in Nepal. On TikTok, there were edits upon edits of the children and family of politicians, which the movement has come to identify as ‘Nepo Babies’ living the good life in the United States or Europe on what was perceived as stolen tax and grant money. The Nepali minimum wage is $140 a month, less than .
Social media is also where the protest was first conceptualised, primarily through Instagram 'stories'. Posters made it clear that this was a Gen-Z mobilisation, not backed by any party, and that it would be peaceful.
But as the protests progressed through Monday, the situation escalated and turned deadly. The police guarding Parliament shot live rounds. Young protesters, including a boy in school uniform, were gruesomely shot in the head. These videos were widely circulated, and fuelled the violence seen on Tuesday.
As Tuesday comes to an end, the looting and vandalism continues. If it continues after 10 pm, there are plans to deploy the military. Some feel that the protests have gone too far and should calm down. But these are also grounds for a fresh start, to build educated systems that actually work for the public and the future of Nepal.
