Nepal lifts social media ban after 19 killed in protest
The Nepal government lifted the ban on social media platforms the day after the violent street protests that left at least 19 people dead.
Platforms including Facebook, X and Youtube were blocked last week, and then it was a major protest rally in Başkent Kathmandu on Monday.
The government has now returned the social media ban, cabinet spokesman and Minister of Communication and Information Technology Prithvi Subba Gurung.
The decision came after more than 100 injuries in the “Gen Z” protests because 19 people were killed and the police in Kathmandu opened fire on demonstrators.
“We withdrew the closure of social media. They are working now, Gur Gurung said to Reuters.
All applications were available on Tuesday morning in Nepal. Kathmandu Regional Manager Chhabalal Rijal said that the authorities also imposed an uncertain curfew in Kathmandu city area.
“No protest, mass meetings, meetings or people’s assemblies will be allowed during the curfew,” he said.
Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli said that he was upset about violence because of olma infiltration from different selfish centers ”.
The authority added that the government would pay help for their dead families and provide free treatment for wounded people.
Oli, said in a statement late at night on Monday, “such events will not be repeated in the future to find the reasons, to evaluate the losses and to propose measures within 15 days,” he said.
Interior Minister Ramesh Lekhak resigned at an emergency cabinet meeting called by the Prime Minister late on Monday.
Rallylies swept the streets around the parliamentary building surrounded by tens of thousands of people who said that companies could not register and did not resort to government supervision.
The government makes a wider attempt to organize social media with a bill aiming to ensure that the platforms are “appropriately managed, responsible and accountable”.
Expressing the proposal, censorship and protests online, the government was widely criticized as a tool to punish its rivals.
The government said that approximately two dozen social networks, which are widely used in Nepal, have been re -notification to officially register its companies in Himalayan country. Those who could not register have been blocked since last week.
Neither Google, the owner of Youtube, nor Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp’s parent company meta, responded to comments requests. Elon Musk’s X platform, Twitter, did not answer.
The video sharing application Tiktok, Viber and three other platforms have registered and operated uninterruptedly.
The wounded were killed and seven of their scores were taken to the National Trauma Center, the main hospital of the country in the heart of Katmandu.
Dr. “Many of them seem to have been hit in the head and chest, Bad said Badri Risa. The families waited worried about their relatives’ news, people lined up to donate blood.
The crowds outside the Parliament shaking red and blue national flags, “Stop the ban on social media. Not social media, not social media,” he mentioned.
The invoice proposed by the government requires technology companies to assign a contact point in a contact office or country.
Right groups called the government’s attempt to prevent freedom of expression and freedom of fundamental rights.
In 2023, Nepal banned Tiktok for breaking the “social harmony, honor and diffuse immoral materials”.
Tiktok’s executives have promised to comply with local laws, including the prohibition of pornographic sites adopted in 2018, the law was abolished in 2024.
With Reuters
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