Why Gen-Z fury led to destruction in Nepal

Three years ago, mainstream newspapers in the West had a bit of fun ridiculing so-called nepo-babies, and the unfair advantage enjoyed by the children of the rich and the powerful, like Gwyneth Paltrow's daughter, Apple, or Lenny Kravitz’s daughter, Zoe.

But in Nepal, nepobabies are no joking matter.

They have just, in part, sparked the most widespread social unrest that the nation has seen in recent years. Last week, this left the prime minister toppled, and the wife of one former prime minister in critical condition.

Today, Griffith University International Relations Professor Renee Jeffery, on the Gen Z-led violence that has erupted in Katmandu, and what triggered tens of thousands of protesters to take to the streets.

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Episode Transcript

S1 (00:01):
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
This is the morning edition. I'm Samantha Zelinger Morris. It's Wednesday,
September 17th. Three years ago, mainstream newspapers in the West
had a bit of fun ridiculing so-called nepo babies and

(00:21):
the unfair advantage enjoyed by the children of the rich
and famous, like Gwyneth Paltrow's daughter Apple or Lenny Kravitz's
daughter Zoe. But in Nepal, nepo babies are no joking matter.
They have just in part sparked the most widespread social
unrest that the nation has seen in recent years. Last week,

(00:41):
this left the prime Minister toppled and the wife of
one former prime minister in critical condition. Today, Griffith University
international relations professor Renee Jeffrey on the Gen Z led
violence that has erupted in Kathmandu and what triggered tens
of thousands of protesters to take to the streets. So, Renee,

(01:08):
welcome to the Morning Edition.

S2 (01:10):
Thanks for having me.

S1 (01:11):
Well, let's start at the beginning. Can you just take
us through what's been happening in the streets of the
Nepalese capital, Kathmandu? Because the violence is quite astonishing. You know,
there's been reports, of course, of tens of thousands of
demonstrators taking to the streets over the last week. And
some of our listeners might have seen footage of flames
pouring out of the Nepalese government building. So how extensive

(01:33):
has the damage been at the time that we're recording
this on Tuesday morning?

S2 (01:37):
Look, it seems from what we can gather that there's
been quite extensive damage. Getting a lot of information is
a little bit tricky. Still, many of the major newspapers
and news outlets are offline. Um, certainly one of the
major newspapers in Kathmandu had its building burnt down. So
it's not reporting. So we're seeing a lot of footage

(02:01):
of burnt buildings and so on. We know that much
of the Singha Durbar Complex, where the Prime Minister's office
is located, has been burnt.

S3 (02:11):
Flames and fury. This was the home of Nepal's Prime
Minister KP Sharma Oli, overrun by protesters who'd forced his resignation.

S2 (02:22):
The headquarters of the Nepali Congress party. So one of
the major political parties has been burnt. The Supreme Court,
the parliament.

S3 (02:30):
The country's parliament building, was set alight in the worst
social unrest the Himalayan nation has seen in recent years.

S2 (02:36):
We also know that the houses of the three leaders
of the major political parties have also been burnt.

S3 (02:44):
Protesters also stormed the homes of ministers, setting them alight
with reports some officials were plucked to safety by helicopter.

S2 (02:52):
Along with shopping malls, offices and so on. So I
guess as the days sort of unfold, we'll get more
information on exactly what the extent of the damage is.

S1 (03:03):
I think it led to the stopping of this city. Really?
Like the international airport shut down at one point. So
obviously it's really been affected. The death toll, I believe,
is now in the dozens with hundreds injured. So tell us,
I guess, what locals are protesting about, and maybe you
can help us walk through the steps that actually led
to this dramatic escalation of violence.

S2 (03:23):
Yeah. So the protests were actually triggered by a government
ban on a number of social media platforms earlier this month.
So they banned Facebook X, LinkedIn, a whole range of
different social media platforms. And in a country with a
very young population, this was always going to be unpopular.

(03:44):
The median age in Nepal is 25. So if we
think in comparison, the median age in Australia is 38.
Nepal has a very young population and like young people everywhere,
they're very attached to their social media. So the government
justified this by saying that these platforms had failed to
comply with an earlier directive, asking them to register so

(04:07):
they could be charged higher rates of tax. So the
Nepali government had instituted a new directive that would see
foreign e commerce or E service platforms being taxed at
a higher rate. And of course, they hadn't done this.
So the government posed this as simply revenue raising and compliance.

(04:27):
But many people interpreted their actions as a way of
trying to stop young people using social media to highlight
or to provide evidence of corruption and nepotism among political
elites and their children. So Nepal is an extremely poor country.

(04:48):
The average person only earns 1,400 USD a year. It
makes it poorer than India, Bangladesh, many, many other countries
in the world. So you can understand that many people,
including many young people, when they saw politicians and their
children posting things on social media with their watches and

(05:09):
shoes that cost more than a person earns in a year.
Drinking bottles of champagne that cost more than an average
person earns in a year. They were upset about this,
and so they began an online social media campaign against
corruption and nepotism. So they interpreted this ban on social
media as a way of stopping what they were doing

(05:30):
quite effectively. So the protests themselves were official sanctioned protests.
They were peaceful protests about social media in the beginning,
but they very, very quickly grew and became about three
other issues corruption, inequality and a lack of opportunities for
young people. Because youth unemployment is running at 20% at

(05:53):
the moment. So it really escalated from there. And on
those issues.

S4 (05:58):
And so can you walk us through the.

S1 (06:00):
Steps, I guess, of how this came to, you know,
buildings burnt and the wife of a former prime minister,
I believe is now in critical condition because her house
was on fire. So how did this happen? So we
get the crackdown on social media. Then we get the
protesters protesting this. And then, as I understand it, domestic
security forces started firing against these protesters. And that's partly

(06:21):
what really kicked things off, isn't it?

S2 (06:23):
Yes, yes. So when security forces began to fire at
the protesters, so initially with rubber bullets, they were using
water cannons and tear gas, and then they started shooting
live rounds into the protesters. And they did kill a
number of them in that first incident. And that really,
really ramped things up. We then saw protesters throwing stones.

(06:48):
Arson and looting began. Um, the protesters attempted to gain
access to the parliament building, but they were stopped by
security forces and things really escalated from there. There's also
some suggestion that some of the people that were involved
in the violence were not originally part of the protests,
and that there were other sort of troublemakers that have

(07:11):
sort of joined in and made this much more violent
than it might have been. Again, that's something that we
will get to the bottom of as all the evidence
comes out after the fact.

S1 (07:22):
Okay. And we know that the Prime Minister, at some point,
I think, tried to to quell the protests by stepping down.
So who's actually been leading the protests and what are
they demanding? Like, do they have specific demands?

S2 (07:34):
So there is no specific leader of the protests. The
student movement is running it, and it's a collective of students.
They're trying to run things democratically because one of the
things they're demanding is a more well entrenched, well established democracy,
but partly also because it is safer for them not
to have single identified leaders who can be targeted by

(07:58):
officials and by security forces. So it's a group of
students that have led it and they are demanding an
end to corruption. Corruption is endemic in Nepal, as is
impunity for corruption. So despite the fact that corruption is

(08:19):
widespread and well known, high level officials, political elites, you know,
rarely face any sanctions for their corrupt conduct. They're asking
for long running inequality to be addressed. The fact that
you've got such a massive gap between the rich and
the poor, and they want opportunities for young people, they

(08:39):
want jobs. They want futures. They want not to have
to move overseas, to have a future to look forward to.

S1 (08:51):
We'll be right back.

S4 (08:58):
And can you tell us a little.

S1 (08:59):
Bit more about the political environment in Nepal, because I
know that before we started recording, you and I had
a brief conversation about what the environment is and how
really it's three major parties and they've all sort of
circled who the leader is amongst them for a very
long time. And this was after the country had been
a monarchy for nearly 250 years. So I guess, can
you tell us a bit about how much political corruption

(09:20):
there's been and whether uprisings such as this are anything new?

S2 (09:24):
Yeah. So Nepal's a wonderful country, full of really beautiful people.
You go to Nepal, you meet Nepalis, and they're just
they're so gentle and calm and there's this wonderful, you know, spirituality.
You've got the, you know, the combination of the different
religious traditions there. And so it seems really quite jarring
that you then have these very, very violent incidents. Nepal

(09:47):
has a very long history of protest movements and protest
movements that typically descend into violence. They very often start
with a single issue like this one has and then
expand to address a wider range of grievances. So we
saw that in the 1940s and 50s. At the time,

(10:11):
Nepal was actually ruled by an autocratic regime. The Ranas,
who had sort of kept the monarchy a bit to
the side. They'd sort of stripped the monarchy of a
lot of its power, and the Rana family were really
quite brutal and led Nepal with a bit of an
iron fist. And in the late 40s and 50s, we
have a protest movement that took some inspiration from the

(10:33):
Indian independence movement and that tried to institute democracy then,
and they were successful for a very short period of time.
By 1960, the king actually seized power and instituted his
own form of autocratic rule that lasted for about 30
years until the 1990s. But throughout that period there were

(10:56):
periodic protests like this, Each protest pushed the democracy movement
ahead a little bit. In 1990, we saw major, major
public protests that were pushing for the end to the
monarchy and the institution of democracy again. And they were successful.
They forced the king to step down. And we have

(11:19):
multi-party democracy in Nepal for the first time and again
in 2006. From 1996 to 2006, in the midst of
the Civil War, the king had seized power in a
royal coup and he re-established Nepal as an absolute monarchy.
By 2006, we saw thousands and thousands of people taking
to the streets, protesting for the King to step down

(11:42):
and for proper multi-party democracy to be established. And it was.
So what we're seeing is actually part of a very
long running pattern of these big protest movements actually actually
been quite effective bringing about change. Yeah.

S4 (12:03):
Okay. Interesting.

S1 (12:03):
So the country became a democratic republic in 2008, and
there's been this three party system, and it has been rife,
as I understand it, with corruption and bribery and favours
for mates. So given that there is this deep historical
tradition of unrest in this country, I guess, how does
this latest outburst fit in? Like, is it quite different

(12:24):
to what we've seen before?

S2 (12:26):
In some ways it's not. In some ways it's very,
very similar. So, you know, beginning as a student movement
and then expanding out, that's happened many times in the past,
starting with a single issue and then sort of expanding
out to a whole range of issues. That's that's been
fairly common. Um, the burning of public buildings, unfortunately, does
happen from time to time. So that's this is not

(12:46):
the first time that's happened, certainly in 1990. Things like
the city hall were burnt to the ground and things.
I think what's different this time is that the range
of acceptable responses will have to be different. So what
underlies a lot of this is the fact that we've
had effectively three people, three leaders of the three major

(13:06):
political parties have swapped or taken turns of being prime
minister for almost 20 years. So Ollie, who resigned last week,
has been prime minister three times. Juba, from Nepali Congress
has had five turns and Pushpa Kamal Dahal, um, the
Maoist leader, has also been prime minister three times. So

(13:28):
each time there is unrest or some sort of political instability,
we tend to have a new political coalition formed between
two of the three parties, and one of them becomes
prime minister. None of those are seen as acceptable alternatives
to the student movement, partly because they have been a
big part of the problem with corruption, because they have

(13:50):
not pursued accountability, because they've ensured their own impunity for years,
and they've enriched themselves partly also because they're all old
and young people are saying it's time for generational change.
Like these three have ruled for 20 years or more
in some cases, and it's time for change. So we'll
have to wait and see. But this one has the

(14:12):
potential to end up with a different set of outcomes,
I think, than the previous ones, just because of the
wider context and the fact that you have these leaders
that are all old and are going to have to
give up power at some point.

S4 (14:26):
So who's actually leading the country now?

S1 (14:28):
Because I know last week when the protests were really,
you know, reaching a real apex, the military, I believe,
had taken over at some point and there was kind
of no one in power because the Prime Minister and
a number of his ministers were just no longer in
the picture. So what's happening now?

S2 (14:43):
Yeah. So that was a huge question, was who was
going to lead because none of the existing political leaders
were deemed acceptable. There were two names that were raised.
One possibility was to ask the politician who's currently the
mayor of Kathmandu to do it. He's a rapper who

(15:05):
won the mayoral election in 2022 as an independent. He's
35 and he's the first independent ever to win. So
a lot of people were very, very keen on him.
I've heard unconfirmed reports that he said he wasn't interested,
that he saw this role as going as temporary and
that he wants a permanent political career. And so taking

(15:25):
on an interim position was not what he was looking for.
So the person that's ended up in the position is
Sushila Karki, who's the former Supreme Court justice. She has
a very, very distinguished anti-corruption and pro-human rights record. She
has butted heads with a lot of powerful people over

(15:48):
corruption in the last few years, to the extent that
there were impeachment proceedings against her in 2017 that were
widely interpreted as an attempt to stop her pursuing powerful
people on corruption charges.

S1 (16:05):
Interesting. And Renee, I guess just to wrap up, you know,
this is a country of 30 million people. There's more
than 100 ethnic groups and spoken languages as you've taken
us through. It's been riven with inequality and political corruption.
And you are an expert in human rights. So you've
very much had your lens on that in terms of
what's going on in this country. So do you think
that this movement can actually lead to true reform in

(16:27):
this country?

S2 (16:28):
Look, I think it's difficult, but I hope that it can.
I don't think it's impossible. In the time that I've
been watching Nepal, it has improved dramatically. 20 years ago,
it was in the middle of a civil war that
at that point, nobody really knew how this was going
to end. They managed to come up with a peace

(16:51):
settlement and it's held for 20 years. That's unusual. Most
countries in the sort of state that Nepal was in
would have been back to war within ten years, but
they've made it to 20 years. They have a new constitution,
a new republican federal form of democracy that, by and large, works. Yes,

(17:12):
there's a lot of corruption. Yes, there's unemployment. The economy
is not great, but things are improving very, very slowly.
So I think I think there is reason to hope. Naturally,
we're going to end up with generational change because the
leaders who have been holding the country back can't live forever.
And so I think this movement, the Gen Z movement,

(17:35):
may well be the one that finally pushed Nepal. The
next step. I might be being too optimistic, but there's
a lot of appetite in Nepal for change. There's no
appetite at all to go back to conflict. But people
are very politically engaged. They care about their politics immensely.
They talk about it all the time. So I'm hopeful

(17:56):
that this will be the catalyst that helps it move
that next step in its democratic journey.

S1 (18:05):
Well, thank you so much, Renee, for your time.

S2 (18:08):
Thank you.

S1 (18:14):
Today's episode of The Morning Edition was produced by Josh towers.
Our executive producer is Tammy Mills. Tom McKendrick is our
head of audio. To listen to our episodes as soon
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(18:36):
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Links are in the show. Notes. I'm Samantha Selinger. Morris.
Thanks for listening.