Nepal’s former Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli was arrested by police on Saturday morning for his role in suppressing large demonstrations last year. Partly due to heavy-handed police action, 76 people were killed and more than two thousand injured. The then Minister of the Interior, responsible for the security services that suppressed the demonstrations, has also been arrested.
The arrests follow the day after the new government of Balen Shah took office. That 35-year-old former rapper defeated Sharma Oli and his communist party in elections at the beginning of this month, on a wave of discontent that has been gripping the South Asian country for some time. The country is plagued by high unemployment, which hits young people particularly hard; the average age in Nepal is 26 years. Dissatisfaction about this was reinforced last year when the government of Sharma Oli announced that it wanted to restrict social media, after images of the luxurious lifestyle of the elite were circulated on platforms such as Discord.
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The demonstrations that followed ultimately led to the dissolution of parliament, the calling of new elections and the resignation of Sharma Oli. The 35-year-old Balen Shah, as the incumbent mayor of the capital Kathmandu, a face of the resistance against the omnipotence of Sharma Oli’s communist party, subsequently won the elections.
Earlier this week, an investigative committee concluded that Sharma Oli should be prosecuted for his role in suppressing those protests. “No one is above the law,” wrote the new interior minister Sudan Gurung on Saturday morning his Facebook page. “This is not revenge against anyone, but the beginning of justice.”
