Police fire tear gas as violence erupts in Madagascar protests

Thousands of antigovernment protesters person marched done Madagascar’s capital, with respective sustaining injuries erstwhile constabulary forcefully dispersed the latest objection successful a two-week youth-led movement.

Violent clashes erupted connected Thursday aft Gen Z activists called for a wide strike, rejecting President Andry Rajoelina’s concessions amid ongoing unrest successful Madagascar. Despite Rajoelina appointing a caller premier curate and calling for dialogue, protests person continued astir regular since precocious September.

What initially began arsenic demonstrations against chronic powerfulness and h2o outages has evolved into a wide antigovernment movement. When astir 1,000 protesters gathered adjacent Lake Anosy, attempting to march to Ambohijatovo Gardens, information forces deployed armoured vehicles, teardrop gas, and rubber bullets to disperse the crowd.

The confrontation escalated into thoroughfare violence, with protesters throwing stones aft constabulary intervention. Medical unit had to evacuate premature babies erstwhile teardrop state seeped into a adjacent maternity facility. At slightest 4 radical sustained rubber slug injuries, portion 2 others were wounded by stun grenade fragments.

Later connected Thursday, much than 200 civilian nine organisations voiced alarm astir “a subject drift successful the country’s governance, alternatively than a hunt for appeasement and an extremity to repression”.

The United Nations reported astatine slightest 22 deaths successful the archetypal protestation signifier – a fig Rajoelina disputed connected Wednesday.

“There person been 12 confirmed deaths and each of these individuals were looters and vandals,” helium told French-speaking tv transmission Reunion La Premiere.

The UN quality rights bureau insisted immoderate victims were protesters oregon bystanders killed by information forces, portion others died successful unit by transgression gangs and looters pursuing demonstrations.

Protesters present request a nationalist apology from Rajoelina for unit against demonstrators, abandoning earlier calls for his resignation.

Despite Madagascar’s affluent earthy resources, astir 75 percent of its 32 cardinal citizens lived beneath the poorness enactment successful 2022, according to World Bank data. The nation’s per capita gross home merchandise has plummeted from $812 successful 1960 to $461 successful 2025, World Bank figures show.