An army-enforced curfew settled over Kathmandu on Wednesday after two days of anti-government protests that left at least 22 people dead and hundreds injured, officials and witnesses said.
Young demonstrators set tires ablaze, ransacked government ministries and forced the evacuation of politicians from their homes as unrest spread from the capital to other cities. The demonstrations were triggered by a government order that temporarily banned 26 social-media platforms, including Facebook, YouTube and X, but protesters and analysts said the shutdown inflamed long-standing grievances over political corruption, inequality and the lifestyles of the country’s elite.
The communications shutdown was officially justified by authorities on the grounds that the companies had failed to register and submit to proposed oversight rules. Protesters, however, said the move was an attempt to mute online organizing and public criticism at a moment when young people were mobilizing around anger at the perceived privileges of politicians’ families and “nepo kids.” The social-media ban was lifted on Tuesday, but the lifting did not stem the unrest; Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli and Home Minister Ramesh Lekhak subsequently resigned amid the turmoil.
“The government in Nepal was trying to use those new social-media regulations to prevent the very thing that happened,” said Michael Kugelman, a South Asia analyst based in Washington, D.C. “So it completely backfired.”
Analysts and human-rights advocates said Nepal’s episode underscores a broader pattern in which efforts to stifle online dissent can deepen popular outrage. The use of internet platforms to organize and amplify grievances is well-documented across the region: protests in Sri Lanka in 2022 and Bangladesh in 2024 were driven in part by online mobilization, while Indonesia has seen ongoing online-driven dissent. The phenomenon first drew global attention during the 2010 Arab Spring, when attempts to cut social-media access highlighted governments’ disregard for freedom of expression and broadened sympathy for protesters.
Authoritarian states have generally tightened digital controls since then. China’s so-called Great Firewall blocks foreign information and curates domestic content; other rules link mobile and broadband access to government identification, and large-group messaging on domestic platforms can require bank-linked verification, creating incentives for self-censorship. Beijing has also moved to deploy artificial intelligence to detect and remove politically sensitive material at speed, analysts said.
“Beijing officials must be looking on their Kathmandu counterparts with pity and glee, counting their lucky stars that mainland Chinese netizens can’t even miss what Nepalese have fought so hard to get back,” said Sean King, senior vice president for Asia at consulting firm Park Strategies.
But tighter internet controls are not confined to autocracies. Freedom House reported in its 2024 Freedom on the Net survey that global internet freedom declined for the 14th consecutive year, with only 17 percent of the assessed population enjoying a free and open internet. Democracies have increasingly used regulatory tools to shape online narratives. In India, for example, the government in 2023 expanded the range of officials who can issue takedown orders directly to tech companies and sought to establish a central “fact-checking” unit ahead of national elections; news reports said a wide range of material, from cartoons lampooning the prime minister to coverage of a fatal stampede, faced removal orders.
Human-rights groups caution that regulation of online platforms can be a double-edged sword. Social media has also been used to spread hate and disinformation that contributed to extreme violence, most notably the campaign against the Rohingya in Myanmar. “Regulating social media has always been a double-edged sword,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, Asia deputy director for Human Rights Watch. “Because sometimes social media can promote violence and the targeting of minority groups and vulnerable communities.”
Nepal’s protesters are demanding immediate and sweeping political changes: the dissolution of parliament, mass resignations of lawmakers, the suspension of officials who ordered force against demonstrators and fresh elections. Whether those measures will address structural problems is unclear. Nepal’s annual per capita income is below $1,400, youth unemployment is roughly 20 percent and more than 2,000 young people leave the country every day to seek work overseas, mainly in the Middle East, figures cited by analysts show.
Local leaders and rights advocates urged the political class to heed criticism rather than silence it. Ganguly said resentment and anger should not have come as a surprise to Nepal’s leadership and warned that governments often choose suppression over addressing complaints. The Nepal unrest provides a cautionary example for states weighing restrictive online controls: shutting down channels of expression can briefly reduce visible dissent but risks validating protesters’ grievances and broadening public sympathy.
Officials in Kathmandu have not announced a timeline for further political steps or broad reforms to the internet rules that prompted the crisis. For now, the curfew and troop deployments have quieted the streets, but analysts said longer-term stability will depend on whether political leaders move to tackle the economic hardships and perceptions of elite impunity that fueled the demonstrations.