From Valletta to Kathmandu: Malta Reacts as Nepal’s Anti-Corruption Protesters Are Gunned Down Over Social Media Ban

Nepal’s Bloodshed Echoes in Valletta: How a Himalayan Massacre Strikes Home in Malta’s Fight for Digital Freedoms

Valletta’s evening air was thick with chatter outside Café Cordina last night, but the espresso cups paused mid-sip when the news flashed across phone screens: Nepalese police had opened fire on demonstrators, killing at least 17 people who were protesting both rampant corruption and a sweeping social-media ban. In a country where Facebook groups organise everything from charity food-runs to village festa committees, the thought of a government turning rifles on its own citizens for tweeting struck a nerve that travelled 6,500 kilometres in seconds.

The Himalayan tragedy feels closer than the map suggests. Over 500 Nepalese nationals live and work in Malta today—dish-washing in St Julian’s hotels, plastering new flats in Marsascala, praying at the small Hindu shrine tucked behind the Santa Venera parish church. For them, the crackdown is not foreign news; it is family on the other end of a WhatsApp voice note. “My cousin was at that protest in Tikapur,” one kitchen porter told Hot Malta, eyes reddening beneath the fluorescent strip-lights of a Sliema restaurant. “Now his wife does not know if he is in hospital or in the morgue.”

Malta itself has tasted the bitter cocktail of corruption and online suppression. Readers still remember 2021’s grey-listing and the daily revelations from Daphne Caruana Galizia’s murder inquiry; we know what happens when officials fear the glare of a smartphone camera. And while no Maltese government has yet blocked Facebook or TikTok outright, the €50,000 “SLAPP-style” lawsuits against bloggers and the chilling effect of the 2022 ‘Media and Defamation Act’ are warnings written in neon. Watching Nepal’s blood-soaked streets, many Maltese see a dystopian postcard of where we might land if we stop pushing back.

Cultural parallels run deeper than politics. Just as festa fireworks light up Maltese skies each summer, Nepal’s Tihar festival fills Kathmandu nights with oil lamps and singing. Both nations turn public space into collective theatre—only yesterday, Nepali theatre became lethal. The contrast jars: on Manwel Dimech Street, activists were handing out flyers for Saturday’s “Reclaim the Internet” march; in Janakpur, police were loading bodies into vans. The synchronicity feels obscene.

Local solidarity sprang up within hours. The Malta-Nepal Friendship Association called an emergency vigil in Floriana’s granaries tonight, urging attendees to bring candles and—significantly—mobile phones, to stream the event live. Meanwhile, University of Malta’s Students’ Democrazy Society set up a donation portal for medical kits and legal aid, mirroring the 2019 student-led push that raised €40,000 for victims of the Indonesian forest fires. Even the Archbishop’s Curia issued a rare tweet: “Violence silences the poor; the Gospel demands we amplify them.”

Tourism operators—already bruised by Nepal’s 2020 climbing-season closure—fear a second blow. Nepalese guest-workers send home roughly €6 million a year in remittances, a lifeline that props up entire mountain villages. If Kathmandu’s internet blackout persists, digital wallets like eSewa go dark; if workers here cannot transfer funds, families there go hungry. “It’s a domino that starts with a bullet and ends with a child dropping out of school,” explains Priya Sharma, who manages a Nepalese grocery in Hamrun.

Back at Café Cordina, the conversation has moved from shock to strategy. A young Maltese game-developer suggests rerouting part of his company’s server capacity to mesh networks that bypass Nepali ISPs. An elderly tourist sipping Kinnie recalls how Malta’s 1984 Freedom Day protests toppled a radio monopoly, proving that small nations can outmanoeuvre big repression. The cups clink again, but now the clatter sounds like a call to arms.

The Nepalese tragedy is not merely Himalayan; it is Mediterranean too. It reminds us that the right to tweet, post or livestream is not Silicon Valley luxury but Mediterranean necessity—an extension of our centuries-old tradition of noisy, public argument. Tonight Malta prays in Nepali, tweets in Maltese, and marches in both languages. Because if bullets can travel across borders, so can solidarity.