How a 16-year-old schoolboy’s fiery speech helped overthrow a government
Avishkar Raut, a 16-year-old schoolboy, delivered a stunning speech that quickly went viral. Six months later, the government was toppled.
In March, a 16-year-old student at a private English school in Nepal delivered a remarkable speech that sent shockwaves around the country.
Six months later, the country’s Prime Minister had resigned, at least 72 people were dead and much of the capital lay in ruins.
It’s the third major political uprising in Nepal since 1990 — but the first to be led by those born in the internet generation.
And many observers have pinpointed Avishkar Raut’s viral speech to Holy Bell English Secondary School in Jhapa as the genesis of the so-called “Gen Z” protest movement that ultimately toppled the government.
“Today I stand here with a dream of building a new Nepal, with a fire of hope and passion burning within me!” the young man boomed, in a clip that quickly went viral and sparked widespread discussions online.
“But my heart is heavy, because this dream seems to be slipping away,” he continued.
“Nepal, our mother, this country gave us birth, nurtured us. But what did it ask in return? Just our honesty, our hard work, our contribution — but what are we doing?
“We are bounded by chains of unemployment, fleeing abroad in search of opportunities. We are trapped by the selfish games of political parties. Corruption has woven a web that is extinguishing the light of our futures.
“Youth, rise! We are the torchbearers of change. If we do not raise our voices, who will?”
Mr Raut’s words and powerful delivery resonated deeply in the Himalayan nation of 30 million, giving voice to widespread anger at endemic corruption, nepotism, poverty and unemployment.
Around 40 per cent of Nepal’s population belong to the generation born roughly between 1997 and 2012, and they have grown up in a digital culture shaped by social media — all while living through the country’s worst years of political instability.
“In the last 15 years there have been 14 changes in government,” University of Queensland lecturer and Nepal expert DB Subedi told news.com.au.
Nepal has seen two major political uprisings in the past, first in 1990 and again in 2006, when a decade of armed conflict with Maoist insurgents came to an end.
The country formally moved from a constitutional monarchy to a federal republic system in 2015, but successive governments have largely failed to deliver promised reforms.
“Since 2006 there haven’t been any new faces in the government — it’s been like musical chairs with the same two or three political parties, the same old figures in a sort of rotation,” said Dr Subedi.
“For the past 20 years there has not been generational change, that’s what young people are frustrated about.”
Since 1990, the country has also seen at least a dozen major political corruption scandals. “None of these were properly investigated or the corrupt officials brought to justice,” said Dr Subedi.
Fleeing abroad
Dr Subedi said the brain drain of young people, referred to in Mr Raut’s speech, had been a “huge issue” for the past two decades but was increasing.
For tens of thousands of Nepalese, Australia has been the place to seek fresh opportunities.
Many come to study. In 2017, Nepal became Australia’s third-largest source of international students behind China and India, and the numbers steadily grown each year since.
Last year there were 65,557 students from Nepal studying in Australia, making up 8 per cent of the total 851,180.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), at the end of June 2023, there were 179,050 Nepalese-born people living in Australia — more than five times the number in 2013.
Nepalese-born migrants are the ninth-largest migrant community in Australia, accounting for 2.2 per cent of the overseas-born population and 0.7 per cent of the total population.
Their median age was 28.6 years, or 9.7 years below that of the general population, and males outnumbered females 55 per cent to 45 per cent, according to the ABS.
Nepal has also become the fourth-largest source of skilled workers.
In the year to June 30, the number of Nepalese workers applying for temporary skilled visas nearly tripled to 3660, making up 5.4 per cent of the total behind India (18.1 per cent), the Philippines (14.9 per cent) and the UK (10.4 per cent), according to the Department of Home Affairs.
In the same period, more than 11,500 Nepalese were granted permanent visas, with 10,891 through the skill stream and 610 through the family stream.
“The push factor for this labour and semi-skilled migration is the unemployment, lack of opportunities, political instability,” said Dr Subedi.
“This is what the young people [protesting] are very concerned about. We could see young people displaying placards saying they don’t want to leave Nepal, they want to find jobs and do well in their own country.”
Nepo kids
With a GDP per capita of around $US1500, Nepal remains one of the world’s poorest countries, but faces staggering income inequality.
Nepal’s richest 10 per cent hold more than 26 times the wealth of the poorest 40 per cent, an Oxfam report found in 2019.
On sites like TikTok and Instagram, the popular “#nepobaby” trend highlighting the lavish lifestyles of Nepal’s politicians and their children has taken off in recent months.
On September 3, the government banned 26 social media platforms — including TikTok, WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook — ostensibly to crack down on the spread of misinformation and disinformation in order to maintain social harmony.
Unsurprisingly, the sweeping ban was widely seen as an attempt to censor criticism of the political elite.
“It also abruptly blocked the virtual spaces where especially the younger generations live, disrupting their daily life,” said Dr Subedi.
The ban sparked large protests in the capital Kathmandu on September 8, when at least 19 protesters were killed — including a number of children — and hundreds more injured after trying to storm parliament.
Facing growing public outrage at the killings, Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli and his cabinet ministers resigned on September 9 and the social media ban was hastily lifted — but the violence by that stage had gained an unstoppable momentum.
Over two days, thousands of angry, young demonstrators burned down government buildings across the country, including the parliament and supreme court.
Protesters targeted symbols of the ruling elite or the wealthy. They torched and looted the homes of politicians, car showrooms, a newly-opened Hilton Hotel and private offices. Even media outlets were stormed and set ablaze.
In one disturbing video shared online, former Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba and his wife, Foreign Minister Arzu Rana Deuba, were assaulted by a violent mob before being rescued, bleeding, by army personnel.
In another, Rajyalaxmi Chitrakar, the wife of former Prime Minister Jhalanath Khanal, was burned alive after protesters set their Kathmandu mansion ablaze.
Fresh elections
Nepal’s parliament was dissolved on September 12 and former Supreme Court justice Sushila Karki, 73, was sworn in as interim Prime Minister after a deal was reached with protest leaders.
Fresh elections have been announced for March 5 next year.
Human rights groups have called for Nepal’s new interim government and protesters to publicly commit to upholding the rule of law and international obligations following the deadly violence.
In a joint statement on Saturday, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the International Commission of Jurists and the International Federation of Human Rights, said it was “vital for the country not to slide backward, but instead focus on addressing entrenched problems of impunity, governance, and corruption through a process under the rule of law”.
“Anger and frustration at bad governance and corruption had been building for some time, and resulted in events that could force a generation of leaders who dominated Nepali politics since 1990 to step aside,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch.
“To build a rights respecting future, a first step should be ending the impunity of the past, by holding suspected human rights abusers and those accused of corruption to account.”
Dr Subedi said it was hard to predict what comes next due to the “very fluid political situation”.
“Let’s be hopeful [the elections take place] otherwise that will create even more chaos and instability,” he said.
“[Ms Karki’s] second biggest challenge is to create some kind of incentives in the meantime … to increase opportunities for young people, but also to check the corruption and investigate the previous [cases]. These are big things which obviously need time. With six months of a mandate, we don’t know how much the interim government will be able to address.”
‘So much destroyed’
On Tuesday, Nepalese officials were still assessing the multimillion-dollar damage from the violent protests.
“So much has been destroyed,” police spokesman Binod Ghimire told AFP, adding that it would take time to calculate the full extent of the damage, including outside the capital.
Ms Karki, speaking as she began work on Sunday, described the “widespread loss of lives and property”.
At the Supreme Court, officials are working under tents outside the charred building, alongside rows of burnt-out vehicles, trying to salvage water-soaked documents.
AFP photographers who visited the gutted parliament building said entire halls had been reduced to blackened ruins by fires that burned uncontrolled for hours on September 9.
The Hotel Association of Nepal reported more than 20 hotels damaged, including the Hilton fire. Others were looted.
Losses were estimated at 25 billion Nepali rupees ($267 million), with more than 2000 workers affected. Damage to the Hilton alone was put as high as $US56 million ($84 million).
Tourism is a key employer, the country’s fourth largest, providing jobs to more than 371,000 people, according to government figures, with more than a million visitors every year.
Fire also ripped through Singha Durbar, the sprawling palace that housed the Prime Minister’s office and ministries.
The historic building is in ruins, its white pillars streaked black. As well as government offices, police stations were attacked, and courts were burned.
“All our records, evidence, files of the Supreme Court have been all destroyed,” Ms Karki said. “Extremely important bodies of the state were targeted and attacked.”
Prisons emptied
While the protests were led by the loosely organised “Gen Z” movement, reports suggested that some of those involved in the violence were “infiltrators”.
“For instance, places of detention were attacked and prisoners released, and digital records in the Attorney-General’s office were deliberately targeted,” the human rights groups said.
“It will be the responsibility of the interim government to conduct a prompt, thorough, independent, credible, time-bound, transparent, and effective investigation into the police’s use of force, as well as attacks by violent protesters, and to appropriately discipline or prosecute all those suspected to be responsible for abuses or criminal acts.”
More than 12,500 prisoners who escaped during the chaos remain on the run, presenting a major security challenge.
The Kantipur Media Group’s building was badly damaged, although the broadcaster has returned to air from a makeshift studio and its newspaper has resumed online.
Durga Khanal, 45, from the Department of Roads, said her office had been badly damaged.
“I support the change they are striving for, but I cannot agree with the destruction of physical infrastructure,” she said.
New minister Kulman Ghising, who has the energy, infrastructure, transport and urban development portfolios, has ordered a rapid damage assessment and a reconstruction road map within a week.
Nepal’s chambers of commerce and industry federation said it was still collating information.
“No type of infrastructure has been spared. The government, private sector, media have all endured losses,” economist Chandra Mani Adhikari told AFP.
“It will take a lot of time and resources to recover and rebuild everything.”
Human rights groups say the interim government must also take prompt action to investigate allegations of corruption that spurred the protests.
“Nepal has witnessed shocking events in recent days and now finds itself at a turning point, where the hard work of securing human rights for all could be built upon or sent into reverse,” said Isabelle Lassée, deputy South Asia regional director at Amnesty International.
— with AFP
Originally published as How a 16-year-old schoolboy’s fiery speech helped overthrow a government
