ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
There are shocking scenes out of Nepal's capital, Kathmandu, today. Parliament on fire. Protesters have attacked politicians and set fire to the airport, too. The prime minister has quit. NPR's Diaa Hadid is following this from her base in Mumbai. Hi there.
DIAA HADID, BYLINE: Hi, Ari.
SHAPIRO: What happened today?
HADID: Well, the latest is that in a brief address, the army chief of staff, General Ashok Raj Sigdel, urged protesters to calm down. But minutes after he spoke, the Nepali army issued a harsher warning to its Facebook page, and it warned them to stand down and said it would take control of the situation.
SHAPIRO: What would it mean for Nepal's army to take control of the situation?
HADID: It's not clear. This is all unprecedented. So we're watching and waiting. I mean, Ari, today was shocking by Nepali standards. It was like the country unraveled. As you mentioned, protesters set fire to the parliament, to government institutions across the country. And this all happened as the prime minister resigned, as the interior minister had already left his job, so it wasn't even clear who was in charge. And it's not now clear if protesters will heed the army's call because they're furious.
To give you a sense, we spoke to one protester who was watching the Nepali parliament burn down. Her name is Soni Kumar. She works full time. She makes $85 a month to support her studies. Her family's too poor to pitch in.
SONI KUMAR: They have killed so many innocent lives. We want politicians to be killed as well.
HADID: She's telling us she wants them to be shot dead.
SHAPIRO: Really shocking to hear this woman say she wants politicians to be killed as well. What are the protesters so angry about?
HADID: Primarily, they're angry because on Monday, security forces killed 19 protesters. Now, human rights activists have criticized Nepali forces for acting with impunity in the past, but nothing like this. And the fury didn't begin there. In fact, it had been bubbling up for a while, through a campaign called Nepo Kids.
SHAPIRO: What is that campaign?
HADID: It's quite similar to what you might imagine in the American context. But for weeks now, Nepali social media users were showing images uploaded by the children of Nepali elites. One of the most memorable was a politician's son who posed beside a Christmas tree that was made of Louis Vuitton boxes. This is in a country where most people don't make more than $2,500 a year. So one activist, who asked to remain anonymous because she's afraid of being targeted by authorities, explained it like this.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTIVIST: Children of politicians started posting about their Gucci lifestyles, their Louis Vuitton lifestyles, where people started actually comparing, and where are we as people?
HADID: Where are we as people? And then the government shut down most social media on Thursday. They said it was because those platforms had not registered with authorities, but it enraged Nepalis who saw it as the government trying to shut them down. So students called for protests on Monday.
SHAPIRO: And so now, with the army threatening to take over, the country's leaders having left their jobs and the most important buildings on fire, where do things go from here?
HADID: I asked somebody smarter than me. Ashish Pradhan is from the International Crisis Group. He told me the big issue right now, the big question, is who in Nepal actually has the legitimacy to govern? And he says that because protesters targeted the whole Nepali political class.
ASHISH PRADHAN: This is pretty unprecedented, especially because of the scale. It hasn't been just targeted at the current leadership or the current ruling coalition. It's been across the board. But that raises really big questions about what follows next.
HADID: You'll note everybody is saying unprecedented, and these are unprecedented times for Nepal. So we're all watching to see what might happen next.
SHAPIRO: NPR's Diaa Hadid, thank you for your reporting.
HADID: Thank you, Ari. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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