Nepalese pretend to bust furniture in #SmashChairChallenge protest
- Published
The #smashchairchallenge was inspired by the scenes during a meeting of the Constituent Assembly last Tuesday
Imitation is not always the sincerest form of flattery, especially if you happen to be a lawmaker in Nepal.
Hundreds in the country have posted pictures with hashtags and the slightly misspelled , pretending to raise a chair as though to smash it into the ground. The pose imitates the chaos in the parliament last week where opposition lawmakers threw chairs as tensions rose ahead of a deadline to draft Nepal's new constitution.
As repeated deadlines have been missed, social media users are using the challenge to urge members of the country's parliament to get on with drafting a new constitution.
Writer came up with the idea along after feeling shocked at the outbreak of violence in the country's Constituent Assembly. They see the #smashchairchallenge as a satirical, silent protest against the political impasse in the country.
"We might lift a chair and threaten to smash it, but we don't actually believe in violence. This was done to catch people's attention so that such brawls do not happen again," Khanal told 91Èȱ¬ Trending.
"This is not a fight against any political party but against violence and it is also to encourage the members of the Constituent Assembly to come to a conclusion about the constitution in a peaceful manner. It has been lingering for a long time."
Political parties have not reacted to the social media challenge, but members of the public have been posting their pictures on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. "Accepting #SmashChairChallenge a great satire and symbolic tight slap to coward #CAMembers involved in this vandalism," read a one , while another for a more aggressive approach, "I am not for #SmashChairChallange, but for #SmashPeopleChallange who are protesting in the road and blocking road even today."
And what explains the two slightly different hashtags? The hashtag #smashchairchallange - spelled with an "a" - was intended as a deliberate typo.
"We thought it would be symbolic to show what is happening is a mistake," says Khanal.
Reporting by Samiha Nettikkara
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