2025 Nepalese Gen Z protests
In September 2025, large-scale anti-corruption protests and demonstrations took place all across Nepal, predominantly organized by Generation Z students and young citizens. Also known as "the Gen Z protests", they began parallel to a nationwide ban on numerous social media platforms including YouTube, Facebook, and WhatsApp, and were motivated by the public's frustration with corruption and display of wealth by government officials and their families, as well as allegations of mismanagement of public funds. The movement expanded to encompass broader issues of governance, transparency, and political accountability. The protests escalated, with police violence against children and hospitals, protests against public officials and vandalism of government and political buildings taking place throughout the country.
On 9 September 2025, Prime Minister K. P. Sharma Oli, along with a few government ministers, resigned. On 12September, Sushila Karki was appointed the interim prime minister of Nepal. The protests subsided by 13 September.
76 people were killed. According to the Nepal Army's official report, of the 76 killed, 22 were protesters, three police officers, and 10 prisoners who were shot to prevent their escape.
Background
On 4 September 2025, the Government of Nepal ordered the shutdown of 26 social media platforms, including Facebook, X, YouTube, LinkedIn, Reddit, Signal, and Snapchat, for failing to register under the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology's new rules. According to People's Dispatch, the registration requirement had been motivated in part as a way to enable the enforcement of a new Digital Services Tax and stricter value-added tax rules on foreign e-service providers in an effort to boost revenue. However, critics alleged the shutdown was prompted by a social media trend highlighting nepotism, focusing on the privileges enjoyed by the children and relatives—nicknamed "Nepo Babies" or "Nepo Kids"—of influential political leaders.According to People's Dispatch, the media platform ban had a significant impact on Nepalese political economy. 33% of the Nepalese GDP comes from remittances, with hundreds of thousands of exit permits being issued, alongside 20% youth unemployment. These remittances keep thousands of households afloat and pay import bills, and also indicate a lack of structural transformation in the domestic economy toward an employment-first model, pushing the youth into work in online spaces. Banning social media thus threatened youth livelihood.
Prior to the protests, the average Nepali citizen made per year, while families of the country's ruling elite displayed their wealth on social media. This "Nepo Kid" trend prompted significant public anger, particularly from Generation Z users. The median age of Nepal's population is 25, meaning that a large part of the population is in Gen Z, the age group that uses social media the most. This relatively young population, combined with the country's largely rural, rough terrain and substantial migration abroad, leads Nepal to have some of the highest social media usage in South Asia. 48% of Nepalese have a social media account while only 33.7% of Indians have a social media account.
Digital coordination
Youth participatory groups, particularly Hami Nepal, used Discord online communities and Instagram channels as central organizing tools in the Gen Z protests. Anyone could join the Hami Nepal Discord group, making it vulnerable to trolls or people not living in Nepal.According to India Today, messages in the Hami Nepal Discord advocated for violence against the Nepalese leadership. Tactical discussions on Discord included procurement and use of Molotov cocktails, suggestions to seize ammunition from police stations, and instructions on disabling airplane tires using acetylene gas. After police response led to 19 deaths, organizers in some Discord servers asked members to stop attending classes. They called for an indefinite closure of colleges and schools until the government accepted accountability for the fatalities.
Protestors used VPNs and posted flyers with QR codes to evade the social media ban.
After Oli's resignation, the army's chiefs met with Hami Nepal and asked them to suggest nominees for an interim leader who would oversee national elections. On a Discord server with over 100,000 members, more than 10,000 users met virtually in a Discord channel to debate. After discussions, several polls, and the use of sub-channels for fact-checking, the members settled on Sushila Karki.
Shaswot Lamichhane, who established the Discord server and served as a channel moderator, was a recent graduate with a background in science and technology. He played a pivotal role in the technical coordination that underpinned these exercises in digital democracy, explaining that the discussions were meant to simulate a "mini-election". Supporters of the process were seen by Al Jazeera English as viewing the online process as "a revolutionary counter to the traditional practice of politicians choosing leaders behind closed doors, which had displayed little transparency."
Sudan Gurung, founder of the youth organization Hami Nepal and widely regarded as one of the central figures of the 2025 Gen Z protests, emerged as a leading voice advocating for transparency and digital democracy. Gurung coordinated online discussions through Discord and served as a liaison between protest organizers and the Nepali Army during the transition period that followed Prime Minister K. P. Sharma Oli's resignation.
Digital privacy and nonviolent tactics
Scholars of nonviolent resistance argue that digital literacy and secure communication have become increasingly central to sustaining nonviolent campaigns in the twenty-first century. In Nepal, the 2025 Gen Z protests began as youth-led demonstrations against a government ban on major social media platforms and long-standing corruption and inequality, and were initially framed by organizers as peaceful rallies and symbolic actions.The shutdown of 26 platforms, including Facebook, YouTube and WhatsApp, heightened fears of surveillance and content removal. Drawing on wider patterns of “digital repression”, activists reported that mainstream platforms felt heavily monitored and vulnerable to takedowns. Youth organizations therefore relied on platforms such as Discord and Instagram as central tools for coordination, using Discord’s server structure, channels and role-based permissions to manage access, share logistical information and hold large-scale discussions about strategy. Some organizers also used flyers with QR codes and virtual private networks to direct supporters to these spaces and to bypass platform restrictions.
At the same time, reports on Discord chat logs indicate that some users also discussed more confrontational tactics, including Molotov cocktails and attacks on infrastructure, revealing tensions within the movement over how far to escalate. Analysts of nonviolent resistance note that such debates are common in contemporary protest waves, where movements often combine mass peaceful mobilization with episodes of rioting or property destruction. The Nepalese case highlights how Gen Z activists have intertwined nonviolent ideals with concerns about digital security, seeking to protect both physical protesters and their online communities while challenging entrenched political elites.
Timeline
8 September
Large gatherings took place in Kathmandu, particularly at Maitighar Mandala and around the federal parliament building, New Baneshwor, with tens of thousands of participants. The protests were originally organized as a peaceful rally by Hami Nepal, an NGO whose website highlights earthquake relief projects. Anil Baniya, one of the protest organizers from Hami Nepal, said the government cracked down on the protesters after some protesters began to climb the walls of the parliament complex and others threw stones. Baniya stated that what began as a peaceful protest was hijacked by "external forces and political party cadres" but that regardless, the government should not have responded to stones being thrown with live ammunition from the armed police. The Straw Hat Pirates' Jolly Roger flag from the manga series One Piece was used by some protesters, in similar fashion to the 2025 Indonesian protests.Although originally led by civic activist Sudan Gurung, the original protest grew and evolved to a movement with no formal leadership, individuals joined voluntarily in opposition to corruption and the social media ban. The demonstrations escalated when protesters attempted to enter the Federal Parliament of Nepal, leading security forces to respond with tear gas, water cannons, rubber bullets, and live ammunition. Video Geolocation published in the evening showed numerous victims killed in front of the parliament building. Victims were seen lying inanimate on the ground, many with serious or fatal wounds to the head and torso, many wearing school uniforms. Videos showed victims with their faces blown off. An expert identified bullets fired as coming from a lightweight 7.62x51mm automatic rifle. The Kathmandu District Administration Office imposed a curfew in parts of the capital near government buildings. However, protests continued.
The confrontations resulted in at least 19 people killed and more than 347 people injured. Seventeen of those protesters were killed in the capital. The National Human Rights Commission called on authorities not to use excessive force and to "show restraint in handling the protests."
In the evening, the government lifted the ban on social media platforms. Home Minister Ramesh Lekhak resigned and got his passport seized. A curfew was imposed in several major cities including Kathmandu, Birgunj, Bhairahawa, Butwal, Pokhara, Itahari, and Damak. Following this, protests for the complete dissolution of parliament began. This was primarily caused by the initial government response to the original protests.