The wave of youth protests in South and Southeast Asia demanding structural changes is rooted in care and solidarity with causes beyond borders. Despite being separated by geography and specific local triggers, the recent mass protests in Indonesia, Nepal, and the Philippines share a profound and unsettling narrative: a deep generational rupture born from economic anxiety, disillusionment with democratic institutions, and anger over rampant corruption.
Youth-led anti-corruption protests started in Indonesia on 25 August 2025 sparked by the proposed housing allowance hike for the Members of the Parliament—this move would have granted the legislators a benefit that exceeded the national average income by over thirty times and was seen as an act of self-enrichment. The protests escalated on 28 August when the police, while clashing with the demonstrators, ran over a 21-year-old rideshare motorcycle driver who was simply passing by the area.
The main catalyst for the protests in Nepal was a nationwide social media ban affecting 26 popular social media platforms, including Instagram, Whatsapp, Facebook, and Youtube. The dissatisfaction from the political leaders fueled the ongoing #NepoBabies online campaign—which originally initiated from Indonesia—exposing the lavish, taxpayer-funded lifestyles of politicians’ children. On 8 September tens of thousands of youths marched peacefully on the streets across the country against corruption and censorship, now dubbed the “GenZ protests”, which turned violent after the armed police openly fired against them. The escalation of violence turned into riots that not only led to the current government stepping down but left many government buildings and businesses known to have affiliations with politicians across the country razed and vandalised.
In the Philippines, a large-scale demonstration, the “Trillion Peso March,” was organised on 21 September 2025, following congressional hearings alleging massive corruption concerning flood-control projects. Investigative reports detailed how billions of pesos intended for crucial infrastructure—in a country increasingly devastated by natural disasters—were funneled to a small circle of favored contractors, often resulting in “ghost” or substandard projects. The protests have been ongoing since September 2025 and walkouts, sit-ins both online and offline, and large scale demonstrations are being organised across different cities and provinces.
Digital Mobilisation and censorship trends in times of dissent
Platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Discord served as primary organisational tools, allowing for rapid, decentralised mobilisation that bypasses traditional media gatekeepers. In Nepal, the “Gen Z” protesters famously used online polls and discussions in a public Discord server to nominate the interim Prime Minister, demonstrating unprecedented digital coordination. The government response to the demands has, in all of the above cases, been to suppress the opposing voices and resort to censorship. TikTok briefly suspended its live streaming feature in Indonesia following the protests upon government request in an attempt to deescalate the situation and limit the people’s ability to mass mobilise. The use and control of surveillance in digital platforms is increasing to crack down on the dissenters; the most visible and most marginalised groups often becoming the targets of such government crackdowns.
The broader patterns of restricting online freedom of expression, though the severity and methods vary, have been ongoing in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Nepal, with disproportionate targeting of queer voices and bodies. The LGBTIQ community has become a visible target for political backlash from conservative and nationalist groups who often conflate LGBTIQ advocacy with “western propaganda.” In societies where the acceptance of queer people is still very low, such backlash feeds into vague laws and cultural anxieties which have been weaponised over the years to justify legal restrictions on queer expressions both online and offline, even before the anti-corruption protests and the subsequent backlash happened.
Authorities in Indonesia frequently invoke laws related to “pornography” and “immoral content” to block LGBTIQ-related websites, social media accounts, and dating applications like Grindr. There have been concerted campaigns since to push back against LGBTIQ visibility, with proposed legislation aiming to explicitly prohibit content presenting “lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender behavior” online. A new Broadcasting Bill has been introduced in 2024 in the parliament which seeks to ban all LGBTIQ content from being represented in traditional media as well as online platforms. This pressure often forces local tech companies to comply, leading to widespread self-censorship among the queer community for fear of online harassment, doxing, or offline repercussions.
In the Philippines, queer individuals face high levels of online harassment, abuse, and hate speech online with activists reporting algorithmic bias and inadequate content moderation by social media platforms. Authorities often fail to respond sufficiently to anti-LGBTIQ content, contributing to a chilling effect and self-censorship. Legislative proposals to pass antidiscrimination law for people with diverse SOGIESC have been stalled in the Philippines for over two decades leading to continued cases of harassment with insufficient legal redress.
Nepal, on the other hand, has enforced multiple platform shutdowns Tiktok being banned for eight months in 2023 and Telegram being banned in August 2025. The proposed Social Media Act (Bill) of 2024 also included vague restrictions and criminalisation of content considered to be against morality and social harmony which may be invoked against LGBTIQ people, as similar laws have been used in the past to take down songs from women and queer artists deemed ‘obscene.’ This broader crackdown on digital freedom, despite constitutional recognition for diverse gender identities, impacts the LGBTIQ community’s ability to organise and access information.
Intersectional impact on LGBTIQ lives
Institutional corruption within law enforcement and the judiciary allows abuses against LGBTIQ people to often go unreported and unpunished, reinforcing impunity. Corruption disproportionately impacts the LGBTIQ population, especially where asserting their rights requires extra administrative and/or judicial hurdles. They are often left vulnerable to coercive extortion, hindering access to justice and essential services. In Nepal, despite constitutional protections, corrupt officials obstruct the process of obtaining citizenship cards or identity documents with the correct gender marker, forcing people to pay bribes to access fundamental rights and government services, which they are already entitled to.
Queer bodies and slogans were visible in the ongoing youth protests, the solidarity with the cause stemming from many of the communities’ own lived experiences under corruption and censorship. Organisations like Arus Pelangi in Indonesia and Blue Diamond Society in Nepal were making strong statements both online and offline and showing political solidarity in the anti-corruption protests. This high-profile visibility, however, is a double-edged sword. There are examples of corrupt authorities, discrimination-enabling laws, and societal stigma exacerbating the continuous targeting and blackmail of LGBTIQ individuals; LGBTIQ activists have been harassed for their involvement in the protests.
“When corrupt systems obstruct identity, silence accountability, and punish visibility, LGBTIQ people become easy targets for extortion and violence. But our communities continue to rise — in Nepal, Indonesia, and across Asia — to demand a future where our rights cannot be bartered, censored, or denied. Speaking out is not only resistance; this becomes an affirmation of who we are.” states Nadine Hassan, Senior Communications Officer at ILGA Asia.
The youth-led protests have been rising across the global south, as seen in Kenya, Serbia, Peru and Morocco, against generational corruption, government negligence, unrealistic policies, and lack of economic opportunity. When states seek to silence dissent against systemic structures that have allowed such rampant corruption to flourish, the impact is compounded against the communities and individuals who are already vulnerable. LGBTIQ individuals and communities experience surveillance, censorship, and restrictions on their freedom of expression both as a result of marginalisation of their identities as well as their recognition of and activism against structures that have led to such marginalisations. ILGA Asia stands in solidarity with the movements across the region calling for justice, transparency, and accountability and urges states to listen to the voices of the most marginalised – including the LGBTIQ communities.
