Nepal's many attempts to "regulate" social media
On a new social media bill that appears aimed at restricting free speech
Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening from Kathmandu. This is Issue 174 of KALAM Weekly, the only newsletter you need to keep updated with everything happening in Nepal.
A big thank you to my newest paid supporter, Rita Thapa, for her generosity and her endorsement of this humble newsletter. Thank you so much for your support. I hope you will continue to enjoy this newsletter.
In this newsletter:
Tensions escalate in Mukkumlung, allegations of live ammunition
Hamas frees hostages, but still no sign of Bipin Joshi
Trump’s foreign aid freeze hurts programs in Nepal
Recommendations
The deep dive: Nepal's many attempts to "regulate" social media
Tensions escalate in Mukkumlung, allegations of live ammunition
by Sandesh Ghimire
On January 25, at around 5:50 pm, a battalion of around 80 Armed Police Force and Nepal Police personnel entered the two camps of the Mukkumlung Protection Struggle Committee in Ballu Danda, Taplejung, and attacked the protestors shouting, “Aren’t you the ones trying to stop the cable car project?” According to Shree Linkhim, coordinator of the Mukkumlung Protection Struggle Committee, they were making dinner preparations when they were attacked. The Armed Police Force chased the protestors and fired live bullets at them.
A live bullet fired at members of Mukkumlung Protection Struggle Committee. (Image: Shree Linkhim.)
Twenty-year-old Sagun Lawoti was shot in the chest, Yam Bahadur Limbu was shot in the thigh, Dharman Palgunwa has a fractured shoulder, and Mangal Lawoti a head injury. They are all undergoing treatment at the Teaching Hospital in Kathmandu. Activists shared photos showing live ammunition casings, which are illegal and constitute a grave violation of human rights. The security forces also ransacked nearby homes and shops, taking items like Red Bull without payment, said Shree Linkhim. After the police attack, protestors called for an indefinite strike on the Mechi Highway from Charali in Jhapa to Taplejung and the Tamor corridor along the Mid-hill highway.
The Mukkumlung Protection Struggle Committee has been protesting a planned cable car to be built in Taplejung up to the Pathibhara Temple since last year. The area’s indigenous Limbus argue that the cable car will harm their deeply held religious and spiritual beliefs and cause widespread destruction to the environment. For more on the protests, read this newsletter from a few weeks ago:
Yogesh Bhattarai, a former minister and UML Member of Parliament from Taplejung district, called a press meeting and said that the Detailed Project Report (DPR) and Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) showed no adverse effects on culture and the environment. However, lawyer Sanjay Adhikari and his team at the Prakash Mani Academy for Public Interest Law contend that an EIA was never carried out for the cable car. Instead, the government greenlit the construction based on just an Initial Environmental Evaluation (IEE), which is not as comprehensive as an EIA. Adhikari has attempted to access the IEE via the National Information Commission and the public’s Right to Information (RTI). However, the government has been unwilling to release the IEE and the DPR to the public.
To bring more attention to the protest, Ek Theatre Group, in collaboration with Chulachuli Theatre Group, has been putting on a play titled “Mukkumlung” at Mandala Theatre in New Baneshwor from January 17 to February 9. The play highlights the rift that the proposed cable car has caused within the Limbu community and focuses on the Kirat Mundhum, a religious oral tradition that attests to the sacredness of the Mukkumlung-Pathibhara hill, the site of the proposed cable car.
Protestors escape from the attack by security forces. Shots fired can clearly be heard. (Video: Shree Linkim)
The development of large-scale infrastructure like the cable car can certainly be complicated. Even Limbus are divided among those who support the project and those who oppose it. But what is abundantly clear is the abuse of state power. The attack by state security forces on a peaceful protest has intensified hostilities in Taplejung, with many describing the mood as similar to the conflict years. The cable car is not a state-led project; businessman Chandra Dhakal’s IME Group is constructing it. The government should have been an arbitrator between the conflicting parties, but by mobilizing security forces to beat up protestors, the KP Sharma Oli administration has shown that it is squarely on the side of corporate interests.
Hamas frees hostages, but still no sign of Bipin Joshi
On Thursday, January 30, Hamas released eight more hostages as part of a ceasefire deal with Israel. So far, 15 hostages, including five Thai nationals, have been released by Hamas while Israel has released hundreds of prisoners it had been holding for years. Sadly, Bipin Joshi, the young Nepali man who has been held in captivity by Hamas since the October 7, 2023 attack, was not among those released. Nepalis had hoped that Joshi would finally be freed as Foreign Minister Arzu Rana Deuba stepped up diplomatic efforts to bring him home.
The question is, why is Hamas still holding Joshi? As a Nepali citizen, he does not make for a valuable hostage. Hamas cannot use him to extract any concessions from Israel or Israel’s big brother, the United States. Joshi cannot be an ideological hostage as Nepal is not party to either side. In fact, Nepal has consistently supported Palestinian statehood at the United Nations. Perhaps the fact that Joshi was working on an Israeli farm is enough to hold him complicit in Israeli excesses against the Palestinians. But then again, Thai nationals, who were working in Israel under similar arrangements as the Nepalis, have been released. Why not Bipin Joshi?
As I’ve written before, perhaps it is time for Nepal to explore other diplomatic avenues. Foreign Minister Deuba can sit with the Thai to learn how they carried out their negotiations that led to the release of Thai hostages. Thai officials mobilized members of the Shia Muslim community to negotiate a deal with Iran, who are Hamas’ primary backers, along with Qatar and Egypt. Nepal has good relations with all three of these countries and could utilize that goodwill to push for Joshi’s release. I’m not aware if Deuba has pursued these channels yet, but if she hasn’t, it is never too late to try. It has been over a year that Joshi has been held captive, and I cannot imagine the pain his family must be in, not knowing whether he is well or even alive. Joshi himself must be going through a just as traumatic time, held hostage in bunkers while Israel pounds Gaza with bombs. Free Palestine, Free Bipin Joshi.
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Trump’s foreign aid freeze hurts programs in Nepal
Last week, US President Donald Trump issued an executive order suspending all foreign aid for 90 days. This week, USAID in Nepal informed the Ministry of Finance on Tuesday that funding would be suspended for at least four projects: the USAID Health Direct Financing Project, the USAID Agricultural Direct Financing Project, the USAID Education Direct Financing Project, and the USAID Inclusive Policy Direct Financing Project. At least 300 more non-governmental organizations that receive funding from the US are likely to be affected.
The affected programs are not critically important to the Nepal government but do provide support that will be missed. According to The Kathmandu Post, the halt in funding will affect planned health surveys like the micronutrient and demographic health surveys. This consequence is likely to be amplified by the US pulling out of the World Health Organization, which will reduce funding for health programs supported by the UN body. This funding cut, however, will only come into effect a year from now.
While some health experts do not foresee a significant impact on Nepal from the funding freeze, it is perhaps an opportune time for Nepali officials to evaluate the country’s dependence on aid. Foreign aid supports many programs in Nepal, especially those related to health, agriculture, and civil society. A public discussion on how foreign aid is utilized — and how it ultimately benefits the aid-giving countries — is long overdue.
Recommendations
Play: Mukkumlung, playing at Mandala Theater every day, 5PM, until February 9
The deep dive: Nepal’s many attempts to “regulate” social media
Image created with Leonardo AI
On Tuesday, January 28, Minister for Communication and Information Technology Prithvi Subba Gurung tabled the Social Media (Usage and Regulation) bill in the Upper House of Parliament. If passed by the Upper House or National Assembly, the bill will go to the Lower House or the House of Representatives. If passed again, it will go to the President for authentication and become law.
This bill, however, is no innocuous piece of legislation. While the bill is ostensibly aimed at “regulating” social media, there are very legitimate fears that the bill, when it becomes law, could be very easily used to censor criticism and penalize dissidents and critics. The bill includes stringent penalties for violators of various offenses, including digital extortion and fraud, scamming and phishing, cyberstalking, cyberbullying, spreading misinformation, and creating deepfakes. While these are legitimate issues that need to be tackled, the bill also penalizes anything that harms Nepal’s “sovereignty,” “territorial integrity,” and “national interest.” These are vague descriptors that could be easily misinterpreted. Would criticizing Nepal’s claim to the disputed areas of Kalapani, Lipu Lekh, and Limpiyadhura violate territorial integrity? Would protesting “national pride projects” like the Pathibhara cable car on social media be considered against the national interest? What if someone alleges that the Nepali government is beholden to foreign interests like Kathmandu Mayor Balen Shah did in 2023? Would that be a violation of our sovereignty?
The social media bill is just the most recent attempt by successive governments to rein in social media. But because they’ve been going about it with the grace of a bull elephant in heat, each attempt has been defeated, however temporarily, by mass criticism. In this newsletter, let’s take a look at how Nepal has attempted to “regulate” cyberspace.
We have to start with Electronic Transactions Act (ETA), the most used and abused piece of legislation that deals with the internet, cyberspace, and digital mediums. This Act, passed in December 2006, was meant to regulate and formalize digital transactions. 2006 was a very different time. Nepal was still in the dial-up internet era, and social media was still in its infancy. Hi5, MSN Messenger, and Orkut were far more popular than the new kid on the block, Facebook. The first mass-produced smartphone, the iPhone, was still a year away.
The internet grew by leaps and bounds, and Nepal’s sloth-like legislative process could not keep up. Before we knew it, we were in the age of high-speed internet; everyone had a social media account and a smartphone in their hand. Along with connecting people and providing information on basically anything, the internet also introduced crimes like online scams, cyberfraud, digital impersonation, revenge porn, online stalking, and digital harassment. Without any other law, the authorities seized upon the only law available to them, the ETA, section 47 of which states:
(1) If any person publishes or displays any material in the electronic media including computer, internet which are prohibited to publish or display by the prevailing law or which may be contrary to the public morality or decent behavior or any types of materials which may spread hate or jealousy against anyone or which may jeopardize the harmonious relations subsisting among the peoples of various castes, tribes and communities shall be liable to the punishment with the fine not exceeding One Hundred Thousand Rupees or with the imprisonment not exceeding five years or with both.
The language was vague enough to encompass any crime committed over the internet. It was so vague that the ETA could also be used to put the fear of jail time in those you didn’t like. So while police and authorities used the ETA to prosecute scammers, fraudsters, impersonators, extortionists, and disseminators of non-consensual sexual material, political figures and those with authority used Section 47 of the ETA to punish critics and stifle freedom of speech.
With internet penetration and social media use rising, citizens found platforms that allowed them to speak out, often criticizing the government of the day. A major turning point in the policing of cyberspace came in 2018, when the brutal rape and murder of 13-year-old Nirmala Panta shook the country. Mass protests, both on and off social media, criticized the state investigation and demanded justice. The Oli government, in an effort to shift blame, banned pornographic websites, blaming easy access to pornography for sexual violence. At the time, few complained, for no one wanted to admit they consumed pornography. The ban on porn went largely unprotested, even though the ban extended to numerous websites that did not host sexual content and/or provided educational material on sexual and reproductive health. This was an early attempt at stifling access to digital content, and the authorities learned that the public would go quietly along. The government of the day decided that pornography was not “decent” and “moral” and that was that.
The next year, in 2019, the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology tabled a new bill — the Information Technology Management bill or IT bill — in Parliament. Almost immediately, rights organizations and free speech advocates cried foul. The bill was more comprehensive in its approach to the internet but repeated the same mistake as that of the ETA — vague language such as “decency” and “morality” that gave way too much leeway to the authorities to interpret as they saw fit. After all, decency and morality are value judgments. The IT bill also mandated that all social media networks formally register themselves in Nepal and pay taxes. This mandatory registration also meant that Nepali authorities could ask social media companies to take down posts under threat of revoking their operating license and imposing massive fines.
Ultimately, widespread criticism prevented the IT bill from turning into law. The Ministry of Communication and Information Technology began to rework the bill, combining provisions from the IT bill and a Cybersecurity Bill into one piece of proposed legislation. This new bill was published publicly for feedback, but did not ultimately make it to Parliament. Social media, meanwhile, became an even bigger thorn in the sides of the mainstream political parties. In the 2022 elections, social media was instrumental in getting Balen Shah, an engineer and rapper, elected to mayor of Kathmandu. Discontent against the mainstream parties spread far and wide, with social media pages proclaiming “No, Not Again” in reference to politicians who had been politicking for decades. Something had to be done.
In November 2023, the Pushpa Kamal Dahal government passed the social media directives. The “Directives on the Operation of Social Networking” mandated the same provisions as the IT bill. They required social media companies to register in Nepal and provided for jail sentences and fines for posts that threatened communal harmony and “spread hatred.” Social media companies were also required to take down posts that offended “public decency” and “morality.” (Directives, however, are not law and thus not enforceable in court.) Then, in December 2023, when TikTok was used to mobilize people to rally against the current political dispensation and advocate for a return to a Hindu monarchy, the Dahal government promptly banned the social media platform.
Last year, a draft of a new social media bill began to circulate. The Oli government had recycled the IT bill into a new social media bill, again retaining everything problematic in the first place and going even further. Last year, Digital Rights Nepal (DRN), an advocacy group, conducted a thorough critique of the draft bill and handed it over to Minister for Communication and Information Technology Prithvi Subba Gurung. It is not clear what changes were made but the draft bill has now been tabled in Parliament and it still includes many of the problems identified by DRN.
The bill addresses internet-specific issues like misinformation, deepfakes, cyberstalking, “sextortion,” and phishing scams, providing fines of up to Rs 2.5 million and five years in jail. But it also mandates social media platforms to require users to use their real names and identities and hand over these details to any investigating authority should they be required. Again, as in the social media directives, social media companies will be required to register in Nepal and form a “rapid response team” to hear complaints from the authorities and take down content upon request. Social media users are prohibited from insulting, demeaning, or “trolling” others and liking, commenting on, or sharing such posts. Any violation of these provisions could lead to years in jail plus thousands of rupees in fines.
Social media and cyberspace do need regulation but not like this. Any law must be careful to balance liberty and security. Safety must not come at cost of individual freedoms like the right to free speech. Women and minorities often face the brunt of digital violence over the internet. Such cases certainly need to be dealt with by the authorities. But given the language of the bill, it appears that the government is less interested in protecting the vulnerable and more in creating avenues to stifle speech they don’t like. Of course, the government says that it is only attempting to police social media and prevent harm, but laws should not be beholden to the good intentions of powerful people. We must proceed on the belief that any possibility for misuse will be realized.
That’s all for this week. I will be back next Friday, in your emails, for the next edition of KALAM Weekly.
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