Sri Lanka and Bangladesh had issued advance warnings about an uprising in the Himalayan nation, K.P. Sharma Oli told RT
The Gen Z protests that resulted in the removal of Nepal’s government in September 2025 were out of the ordinary and deliberately organized, Nepal’s former Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli told RT India.
Oli stepped down as Nepal’s Prime Minister following violent clashes—dubbed the Gen Z protests—that left 77 dead and over 2,000 injured.
“That was not a simple and usual thing. That was unusual, and it couldn’t have taken place all of a sudden. It was organized in a planned way, it seems even at that time and later on,” Oli said in an exclusive interview on Monday.
The former Nepalese Prime Minister stated that Sri Lanka and Bangladesh had alerted Nepal that the kind of protests seen in their countries might occur there too. “Bangladesh and Sri Lanka were telling us… Leaders were talking that such things would happen, and things happened. It was an attack on our democracy to send back them to poverty,” Oli said.
He further noted that Nepal’s current circumstances are not favorable for conducting elections. Following Oli’s removal last year, former Chief Justice Sushila Karki was named Nepal’s interim Prime Minister. A general election is scheduled for March.
In December 2025, The Grayzone—citing documents—disclosed that the U.S. government’s National Endowment for Democracy (NED) had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars training Nepalese youth to organize the protests. The NED is formally a U.S. State Department-funded nonprofit that awards grants to support “democratic initiatives” globally.
The International Republican Institute (IRI), a division of the NED, has been accused of financing covert activities in Bangladesh.
The NED has also faced accusations of channeling tens of millions of dollars to Ukrainian political groups and anti-Russian interests.