At least 19 killed, hundreds injured in protests after Nepal social media ban

At least 19 people were killed, hospital officials told local media outlets, and hundreds injured during a violent crackdown by security forces on demonstrations across Nepal on Monday, sparked by a ban on social media applications including WhatsApp and widespread anger over accusations of government corruption.

The number of those killed and injured could not be independently verified. Nepal’s prime minister’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

Nepal’s home minister, Ramesh Lekhak, tendered his resignation to Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli amid calls for the latter’s resignation by critics across the political spectrum. Lekhak cited moral grounds, a minister present at a cabinet meeting Monday at the prime minister’s home told the Kathmandu Post. Oli, who is serving for the fourth time, heads the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) and is leading a coalition government alongside the Nepali Congress party.

Oli called an emergency cabinet meeting Monday, but he has not officially responded to the demands of protesters.

Police in Kathmandu, the capital, responded with lethal force to a swell of protesters entering the area around the parliament building, firing live ammunition along with water cannons, rubber bullets and tear gas, according to videos shared widely on social media, which could not be verified immediately, and local media reports. Videos posted Monday appeared to show protesters shot in the head and chest. Protests and clashes in Kathmandu and other Nepali cities continued even after a curfew was imposed for certain neighborhoods in the afternoon.

The demonstrations have come to be known as the “Gen Z protests,” given young peoples’ widespread participation. Photos showed signs decrying nepotism and political elites.

On Aug. 28, Nepal’s Ministry of Communication and Information Technology ordered all social media platforms, foreign and domestic, to register with the ministry within seven days or face a nationwide ban. In a notice issued after a Supreme Court directive, the government said companies must appoint local representatives - including a grievance officer and compliance monitor - to continue operating. Platforms that did not comply would be deactivated, while registered services would be reactivated immediately. The ban went into effect Thursday; 26 apps were blocked, including WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Signal, Reddit and X.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists labeled the ban a “dangerous precedent for press freedom.” The bans came amid wider discontent - and they removed key platforms where it could be expressed, which appeared to deepen anger in the streets.

The ban ruptured communication across the country as well as with family members abroad - Nepal has a huge migrant population in India, Malaysia and Persian Gulf countries. It also affected businesses, especially tourism companies that rely on social media for communication, and made reporting from the country more difficult.

Meta, which owns and operates WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram, and Google, which owns and operates YouTube and LinkedIn, did not immediately respond to The Washington Post’s request for comment about the protests or the apps being banned in Nepal.

“The independence of the nation is greater than the loss of jobs of a handful of individuals,” Oli, the prime minister, said in a speech Sunday in defense of the social media crackdown, the Guardian reported. “How can it be acceptable to defy the law, disregard the constitution and disrespect national dignity, independence and sovereignty?”

The protests - the latest moment of chaos in the politics of the country’s young democracy, formed after the abolition of its monarchy in 2008 in a peace deal to end years of civil war - were sparked by wider criticism of the government over allegations of corruption and nepotism. The demonstrations have also brought international attention to those complaints.

“Social media curbs are the proximate trigger for these protests, but the fundamental driver is the issue of corruption,” said Michael Kugelman, a senior fellow at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada. “I do think that there will be significant levels of pressure on the government to address the demands that the protesters bring.”

Protests movements have challenged or brought down governments in other South Asian countries in recent years, including Sri Lanka in 2022 and Bangladesh last year. Nepal’s protests come in the wake of anti-government protests in Indonesia in recent weeks demanding government accountability.

“The major takeaway here is that in Nepal, and across the region, you have a common experience of people feeling aggrieved by similar issues: corruption, nepotism, state brutality and indeed wider economic stress that’s not being addressed,” Kugelman said.

Nepal’s former prime minister, Pushpa Kamal Dahal, widely known as Prachanda, criticized the social media ban and asked for it to be lifted in posts to X on Monday. He said the government should address the wider issues of corruption to prevent the situation from deteriorating further.

Vehicles belonging to the country’s Human Rights Commission, which sent monitoring teams to the protests, were attacked, the commission said in a statement, which accused security forces of using “excessive force.” The commission did not clarify who attacked its monitoring teams.

The government should “be serious about the voices of the next generation,” the commission warned.

TikTok, which had been banned for a previous stint over hate speech concerns, was spared this time: The app, owned by the Chinese parent company ByteDance, appeared to have complied with Nepal’s government registration process and accepted local oversight.

In Morang in eastern Nepal, a 17-year-old high school student, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of government backlash for speaking with media, told The Post that he is afraid of local authorities knocking on his door to penalize him for sharing some now-deleted anti-government posts on Instagram and TikTok.

“I have heard they are checking who posted about the protests and going door-to-door to punish people,” he said.

The student traveled from Morang to Itahari, a business hub in eastern Nepal, Monday at noon local time to run some errands and meet a friend. In Itahari, he saw civilians setting fire to parts of the municipality office and “the police yelling warnings at them and threatening them with guns,” he said. He didn’t see the police shoot anyone.

By the time he came home at 4 p.m. local time, news about the “dangerous and deadly” response to the protests had spread on social media. He has been using Instagram and WhatsApp through virtual private networks (VPNs) that can circumvent government bans.

Nepali social media is rife with videos and photos of young people who were protesting or even passersby who have been shot in the head or chest, he said.

“I don’t know what tomorrow will bring,” he said. “I hope it’s peace, but I am afraid the government will take its revenge and punish everyone who participated in the protests in person and online.”