Nepali protesters proud at change , university student Aditya Rawal was outside Nepal’s parliament with hundreds of other anti-corruption protesters when gunfire crackled and 14 people slumped down in front of him.
One was his university friend, and as he dashed forward to help — with his hands up — bullets smashed into him too.
“I heard somewhere that if you raise both hands, they will not shoot you,” Rawal, a 22-year-old digital marketer, told AFP as he lay on a bed in the capital Kathmandu’s Civil Service Hospital.
“But I was their target.”
At least 72 people were killed during chaos beginning on September 8, as youth protests under a loose “Gen Z” label rallied against a government ban on social media.
“There had been so many protests in Nepal by older people, but in our ‘Gen-Z’ protest, they used guns”, Rawal said.
A day later, protests escalated, driven by economic woes and anger at government corruption.
The veteran prime minister quit and parliament and key government buildings were set on fire, before the army seized back control.
It was the country’s worst unrest since the end of a decade-long civil war and the abolition of the monarchy in 2008. On Friday, former chief justice Sushila Karki, 73, was sworn in as interim prime minister, tasked with steering Nepal to elections within six months.
