Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka: Is South Asia fertile for General G sessions? | Protests

New Delhi, India – The death of death looked from the iron gates, such as the warm shield, as the crowd rose forward. Sea stormed the barriers, which were standing as the guardian of the authority barely hours ago.

The corridors of the country’s leader’s house repeated the muddy thunder. Some shattered windows and handicrafts, while others have picked up sheets or luxury shoes.

The building and its luxurious interiors were symbols of overwhelming power, which could not be penetrated and out of millions in the country. Now, however, they belonged for a period of time to people.

This was Nepal last week. He was also Sri Lanka in 2022, and Bangladesh in 2024.

As Nepal, a country with 30 million people located between India and China, which now draws its future in strange ways on traditional electoral democracies, a series of young protest movements led by young people that overthrew governments one by one in South Asia, also raised a wider question: Is it the most Zero Zere region to recruit in the world?

“It is certainly very amazing. There is this type of new policy for instability,” said Paul Stanillaland, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, whose research focuses on political violence and international security in South Asia.

On Thursday, about 10,000 Nepalese youth voted, including many in the diaspora, in favor of a temporary prime minister that is not through material or electoral polling cards, but through a survey of the Internet survey on Discord, a platform that players use mainly. Nepal, where three days of protests against corruption and favoritism turned into violence, with a campaign by the security forces that led to the death of more than 70 people, announced new elections in March.

But the protests, which forced Prime Minister Kp Sharma Oli to resign days after he mocked the Gen Z’s origins for the instigators, already showed that in the nation after the nation in South Asia, the increasingly frustrated young people hold power and announce themselves when they feel betrayal of political systems that come out of their requirements.

This is a dramatic transformation for South Asia, a long -term region of major political protests, but regimes are rarely toppled. “This is a completely different type of orientation from a world with military coups, or the main form of political conflict is another thing,” in reference to the ways in which political crises in the region have already played.

Both protest movements – in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal – were rooted in a specific date and were operated by unique events in this country. However, analysts say, there is a common thread that passes through the anger that exploded in these countries: a generation that refuses to live with broken promises, and the factors that lead them.

Experts say these movements seem to learn from each other.

From Colombo to Dhaka to Kathmando: The background

The GEN-Z’s protests in Kathmando began after the government banned social media platforms, noting misuse and the failure of platforms in registration for the organizers. But grievances were much deeper: Inequality, corruption and favoritism The main youth operators were in a country where the transfers sent by Nepalis abroad were sent a third of the country’s economy.

Thousands of teenagers hit streets, and many still wear school uniforms. More than 70 people were shot dead, and hundreds of others were injured.

However, violence unleashed the demonstrators by the security forces only exacerbated the crisis. Some demonstrators ignited Parliament, while others ignited the homes of other political parties, some leaders, and even the largest home in the media in Nepal. The demonstrators also stormed an initial house, and looted it.

The first day was resigned.

It was completely different in Bangladesh in 2024. There, I started a campaign led by students against discriminatory business classes. But by summer, after a series of police campaign operations for peaceful demonstrators, hundreds of civilians have killed, the movement’s personality turned into a wide alliance calling for the end of the government of Prime Minister Sheikh Sheikh Al -Shaq Al -Tawil.

The protests had a loose leadership structure: Student leaders issued the warning and lists of demands of the government, and opposition figures provided support. All that the Hanisa government did – from the brutal attacks on the instigators of students to the power outage – just the exacerbation of the crisis. Ultimately, on August 5, 2024, the Prime Minister resigned, escaped to close the Indian ally from a helicopter.

Two years before the turmoil in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka had her own moment. There, the protests were in response to the economic collapse as Sri Lanka failed her debts. By March 2022, daily life has become bitter: power outages for 12 hours, long -term fuel and cooking lists, and inflation above 50 percent.

SRI Lanka, which belongs to the “struggle” in Sinhala. Young activists have created a protest camp called “Gatagaama” (“Gotta Go Village”), in front of Colombo’s presidential trust. It was a reference to President Gotabaya Rajapaxa, whose family had ruled the country for 15 years from 18 years. The site has become a center for gatherings, art shows and speeches.

In mid -July, Rajapaxa fled the country after its residence exceeded the demonstrators.

“The dissonance was very high”

For Minakshi Ganguli, deputy director of Asia in Human Rights Watch, the overthrow of strong governments by the movements led by young people in the three countries have joint foundations: social and economic contrast that is not processed and corruption by the established political elite that left them through the challenges facing the younger term.

Many in Gen Z suffered two economic periods in their lives: in 2008-2009 and then in the aftermath of Covid-19. Ganguli said that the generation also had two training years, isolated from their physically peers, although these friendly years were also enlarged using digital platforms to unprecedented levels.

All of this happened while they were increasingly governing the leaders of their ancestors. When these governments were dropped, she was 73 years old in Nepal, and she was 76 years old, and Rajapaxa was 74 years old.

“Young people in South Asia cannot find anything to link them to their political leaders,” Ganguli said. “The dissonance was very high.” She added that this type of gap in contradictions between their lives, politicians and their children, pushed anger.

This is why protests against patronage – which have taken the form of social media #Nepokid in Indonesia, which have also seen a collective urge in recent weeks – also resonated in Nepal.

Stanland said that the most common theme among the movements led by young people in South Asia is the ability to imagine a better political and economic future, and see the gap between what they aspire to and reality.

“Their strengths of their strength are the aspirations of desires and grievances, and a sense of communication,” Stanilland told Al -Jazeera.

These countries also have intertwined demographic factors: approximately 50 percent of the population in all three countries less than 28.

Experts say that the social and economic focus of movements, instead of the movements based on the demands of separation or the grievances of any one minority, helped them attract wider masses throughout their countries.

“When these governments face a protest, they do not have many cranes to refer to, especially among an unequal society (society) or slowing economic growth,” said Stanilland.

Gen Z Edge

Romella Sen, director of the faculty of the Master’s program in international affairs at Columbia University, told the island that if one looks beyond the images of anger arising from the protests of these countries, “There is a very democratic ambition for political integration, economic justice, and its elected representatives.”

Through the young demography, arrival and cunning when it comes to the Internet, Sen said, South Asia from General Z managed to take advantage of the digital platforms “effortlessly for society, organization and self -expression.”

The prevention of access to the Internet, or specific platforms, is only unprecedented on governments.

In Nepal, the demonstrators at Gen Z only wanted not to see luxury lifestyles (and) lifestyle lifestyles (and) foreign education that was built on the bodies of their future, “said Senator.

She added: “There is a real thing about this framework generations – the moral anger of young people against a generation that steals their future.”

“Smochs about fairness, future, and jobs, along with the technological savior, give these movements an advantage over traditional elites.”

Do they learn from each other?

Jeevan Sharma, a political anthropologist in South Asia, who is currently in Kathmandu to search, said these protest movements have learned from each other, as well as other global protests led by young people, as is the case in Indonesia and the Philippines.

He said: “The Nepalese youth were closely witnessing and following the movements in Sri Lanka and Banca,” adding that the political movement led by General Z did not appear in isolation, but because of the deep disappointment in the country’s political leadership.

Stanilland agreed. “Certainly, these movements watch, learn and inspire each other.”

Sen of the University of Colombia, whose research focuses on civil conflict and the rule of rebels in South Asia, said Sen said that the protest tactics used in Nepal and other regional countries – including hashtag campaigns on social media and decentralized organization – are a book of digital protest.

The only question is: Where will these protests erupt after that?