The Nepali students on the Southern Miss campus gathered in front of the BSU building in solidarity of those whose were killed in the protests in Nepal.
There were at least 19 dead and over 300 injured during protests in Kathmandu, Nepal, on Monday. The protest, called the protest of Gen Z, occurred after the government banned social media including Facebook, X and YouTube, which has been lifted. The protest grew to be more than just social media, but about corruption and the system in Nepal.
According to BBC, many protesters held signs saying “ENOUGH IS ENOUGH” and “END CORRUPTION.”
The protests continued on Tuesday spreading from the capital to many cities nationwide. Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli resigned on Tuesday due to the anti-corruption protests going on. On Tuesday, there were at least three more deaths.
Senior Janit Rajkarnijar, a participant, explained how different news outlets are perceiving the protests. He said that he saw the media say the protests were only about the social media ban, but it was more than that.
“I think it was important because a lot of people here, they don’t know the reason why people were protesting,” said Rajkarnijar. “So many of them think it’s just the social media ban because everywhere, even if you Google the reason why the protest happened, many of the sources say it happened because of a ban on social media and Gen Z fights the ban on social media. But that’s not really the reason the people started being public about their opinions on the government and different decisions and how the children there were living these lavish lives form tax money.”
Ph.D student Vivek Paudel of Nepal is a participant in Monday’s solidarity event. He explained everything that occurred in Nepal has impacted him a lot. He said he showed up to the event to show respect to those whose lives were lost and to raise awareness about the protests that went on.
“I am an international student, and I am from Nepal. I came here for two things,” said Paudel. “One, to pay tribute to the people that we lost yesterday back home, and to raise a voice of how the narrative of a protest that was against corruption, that was against the system that has been failed again and failed again, and we are tired of it was being changed to the narratice of how it was just against social media.”
Paudel’s immediate family was not impacted during the protests, but he considers the country of Nepal as his family. He said that Nepal was impacted in big ways because of the deaths that occurred.
“My whole country is impacted and my whole country is my family, so technically, yes, anyone immediate yet, none, which I’m glad, I reached out to them and asked them if they were impacted or not,” said Paudel. “My best friend and their neighbors were impacted in certain ways where they had to go through really traumatic events, see things that I feel nobody should go through, and yes if I call the country as family, my family was impacted in bigger ways.”
