Last month, Nepal was transformed by its youngest citizens. What began as outrage over a government attempt to shut down social media erupted into a movement powerful enough to topple a prime minister and dissolve parliament. The protests killed at least 19 people and injured more than 100. The streets may be quieter now, but there is no peace. Nepal is a tinderbox, and the danger is far from over.
At the heart of the unrest are young Nepalis who refuse to accept a future stolen by corruption and nepotism. They are students and professionals who have grown up in a country where privilege has outweighed merit and corruption has bred cynicism. Their defiance is a warning that when governments protect privilege by silencing the discontented, liberty is extinguished and despair fills the void.
The recent ban on social media was never merely about limiting access to Facebook or Instagram. Messaging apps such as WhatsApp were included, cutting off encrypted channels that many rely on to communicate safely. For young people, families, and faith communities, WhatsApp has often been the only secure link to loved ones. The removal of these platforms did not simply restrict social media use. It stripped away the last vestiges of safe communication.
This is how authoritarianism takes hold. It does not always announce itself with soldiers in the streets. More often, it advances quietly, through small restrictions that accumulate until silence becomes absolute. Moscow and Beijing have followed this path. Nepal’s swift unrest is a stark warning: where speech is denied, justice falters, and violence claims the space that remains.
For Christians in Nepal, the danger is particularly acute. Anti-conversion laws make evangelism a crime, carrying penalties of deportation or imprisonment. These prohibitions fall most heavily on Christians, while efforts to force citizens back to Hinduism are not only tolerated but celebrated. In practice, the right to practice faith freely is constantly under threat.
Periods of upheaval only heighten these risks. In recent weeks, Christians and other minorities have been scapegoated for protests they did not cause. A family living near the Indian border has already endured threats of rape and murder, while being told that riots were the fault of those sympathetic to America and India. Within this context, such language clearly meant Christians and others who embrace Western values of freedom.
This is the oldest tactic of failing regimes. When legitimacy falters, blame the powerless. Periods of unrest bring special peril to vulnerable communities. The persecution of Christians in Nepal is not an isolated story. It reflects a wider truth seen across authoritarian systems. Tyrannies instinctively target both free speech and faith because both are essential to human dignity and freedom.
Nepal’s uprising is uniquely its own, yet its spirit resonates beyond the Himalayas. The values animating it—accountability, dignity, and the right to speak and believe freely—are the same values that sustain free societies everywhere. And they are precisely what terrify autocrats. The desire to live without fear cannot be contained by borders.
An interim government has been named, and elections have been promised, but the anger that drove Nepal’s youth into the streets has not been extinguished. It smolders beneath the surface. The question is whether courage will lead to reform or whether it will be crushed by another cycle of repression.
For the West, the lesson is clear. The desire for freedom does not need to be manufactured or imposed. It spreads because it is true. When young Nepalis risk everything to declare that they have had enough, they remind us that liberty is not a Western invention. It is a human inheritance. The responsibility of free societies is to see their struggle clearly, to stand in solidarity, and to speak without hesitation for those resisting censorship.
Nepal’s youth have shown that the will to live in freedom is stronger than fear. Their stand should unsettle Moscow and Beijing, for it demonstrates how fragile authoritarian power truly is. It should also unsettle us. To remain silent while voices are being crushed, whether through censorship or through persecution of faith, is to betray the values that free societies claim to defend.
Meaghan Mobbs, Ph.D., is the director of the Center for American Safety and Security at Independent Women.
