From France to Nepal... when have student movements been the harbingers of social change?

News Topical, Digital Desk : Student protests in Nepal, now being called the Zen-G protests, have toppled PM Oli's government along with restoring internet media. This is not the first time this has happened, from East to West, modern history is full of such student movements.

Sometimes they succeed in overthrowing the regime, and sometimes the regime crushes the students. But even after defeat, Gen-ji protesters often become catalysts for revolutionary political, social and cultural changes. Let's take a look at such historic student movements…

France was changed by the 1968 student revolt

In 1968 a student revolt that began in a suburb of Paris soon merged with a general strike. Nearly ten million workers took to the streets demanding better working conditions. Paris was hit by the worst riots since the thirties of the twentieth century and the whole of France came to a standstill.

French President Charles de Gaulle's government survived, but France was forever changed. The conservative Gaullis gave way to an open, tolerant and secular society where wages were much better. This story of 1968 still inspires rebellious sentiments today.

latin america

The list of Latin American student movements is long, from the 2011–13 Chilean winter protests by students against educational inequality and neoliberal policies to the Mexican student movement against authoritarianism prior to the 1968 Mexico City Olympics.

This movement was brutally crushed. The list includes many events such as Argentina's resistance against military dictatorship, the challenge to the Ortega regime in Nicaragua.

Voices of students have been raised in America too

The US has had some of the most active student organisations in the world. This also raises hopes that Trump's attacks on freedom of expression will ultimately fail. In the 1960s and 1970s, students protested both wars. The student anti-apartheid movement led to reforms in distant South Africa. Today, American universities seem divided over the Palestine-Israel conflict, but it is possible that there will be a consensus on this issue in the future.

1979 Islamic Revolution of Iran

University students were key participants in the Islamic Revolution that overthrew Iran's Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in ​​1979. In recent years students have protested for the same secularism and ties with the US they were agitating against five decades ago.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s tough stance is exactly the kind of provocation that can trigger a student movement with the help of a sudden provocative event.

1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre

In 1989, student-led protests broke out across China, including in Tiananmen Square, demanding democratic reforms and an end to corruption. On the night of 3–4 June, Cen violently suppressed the protests.

Many protesters were killed in the crackdown, known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre. The famous image of a single man wearing a white shirt and black trousers stopping tanks during the demonstration still signals the possibility of resistance to communist repression.

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