(English) Antananarivo calm following protests, unrest

Miala tsiny fa tsy mbola misy amin’ny teny malagasy ity lahatsoratra ity.

The situation in Madagascar’s capital Antananarivo is calm at present, following widespread protests across the city and in other areas of Madagascar yesterday (Thursday 25 September).

Five people have been confirmed killed in disturbances developing from the protests.

Thousands of people defied a national ban on ‘large gatherings’ to unite in the capital city on Thursday in a pre-planned demonstration, primarily to protest against regular and long-lasting water and power supply cuts.

The demonstration appears to have been largely organised on social media, bearing some similarity in that to recent protects in Nepal, led by the country’s ‘generation Z’, which deposed the Asian state’s government earlier this month.

Though the demonstration began peacefully, it later developed into significant unrest, in which five people were killed as the police used rubber bullets and tear gas, and baton-charged protestors, and the demonstrators set fires, built street blockades and targeted the homes of some politicians close to Malagasy president Andry Rajoelina with vandalism.

In some parts of the city, shops were looted.

Power and water supply cuts are a regular occurrence in Madagascar, a country in which only around a third of residents have electricity. Cuts often last up to eight hours per day.

Some 90 per cent of Malagasy people live below the global poverty baseline of £2.22 per day, but the state-owned power company Jirama receives around ten per cent of Madagascar’s annual revenue. There have been protests outside its headquarters in Antananarivo for several months.

And power and water supply issues were not the only ones raised at Thursday’s demonstration. Many protestors carried signs decrying what they say is the Malagasy government’s failure to guarantee basic human rights.

Rajoelina is currently in New York at the UN General Assembly meeting, but 13 of Madagascar’s 18 Senators on Wednesday denounced the protest as an ‘attempted coup’.

Police imposed a curfew across the city from 5pm to 7am, but the disturbances continued into the night, with explosions heard in the city up to around 2am.

Schools across the capital were closed today, and many people stayed at home rather than risking what many feared could be a continuation of unrest today. Money for Madagascar paused an ongoing meeting with partners in Antananarivo, which we plan to continue on Monday.

The situation in the city – at the time of writing – is calm, though it is unclear whether disturbances may begin again after dark.

Andriy Rajoelina has yet to comment on the situation in Antananarivo.

Image © AP.