Ex-Senate Leader Gets 10 Years Hard Labor Over Madagascar Protest Crackdown

Richard Ravalomanana, the former Senate president of Madagascar, has been sentenced to ten years of hard labor for his role in the violent suppression of protests that swept the island nation in September and October 2025. A court handed down the conviction after a single day of hearings, according to Madagascan media outlets.

His defense team moved immediately to contest the verdict. Lawyer Lazatiana Razafimamonjy, speaking outside the Anosy Palace of Justice in the capital, confirmed the charges centered on complicity in murder and complicity in voluntary assault and battery. “The law provides for avenues of appeal, which we will use,” Razafimamonjy told cameras.

Additional reference context is available at https://imazpress.com/france-monde/madagascar-l-ex-president-du-senat-condamne-a-dix-ans-de-travaux-forces-pour-la-repression-des-manifestations.

The events that led to the conviction began on September 25, 2025, when the youth-led collective Gen Z organized a major demonstration against chronic water and electricity shortages across the island. The security response was severe. United Nations documentation recorded at least 22 people killed and more than one hundred others wounded on that single day. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk expressed shock at what he described as the “violent response of security forces,” noting that “certain officers also used live ammunition.” AFP interviewed a 19-year-old student named Mirana in Antananarivo whose lower back was severely injured by a tear gas grenade fired by gendarmes from the back of a pickup truck speeding through the capital’s hilly streets, an incident captured in widely circulated photographs and video footage.

Ravalomanana, a retired gendarmerie general nicknamed “Bomba” for his heavy-handed use of tear gas during Madagascar’s 2009 political crisis, remained on the island as events unfolded. He had been held in preventive detention since January 18, 2026, and was previously stripped of his Senate position in December. His conviction is part of a broader judicial reckoning with security force actions during the protest period.

The political fallout from September 25 accelerated quickly. Sixteen days after the initial demonstrations, military personnel aligned themselves with the protest movement, leading ousted leader Andry Rajoelina to flee the country on a flight chartered by France. Colonel Michaël Randrianirina, who assumed power following the military intervention, became the new strongman of the Indian Ocean island nation. One soldier was killed during brief armed clashes between military and gendarmerie forces on the day of the mutiny.

Randrianirina has committed to holding elections within two years of his October 17, 2025 investiture as “president of the Refoundation.” The transition, however, has not proceeded smoothly.

The Gen Z movement, which catalyzed the initial upheaval, has shifted from cautious optimism to growing concern about the pace of institutional reform and anti-corruption efforts. That anxiety sharpened in April when six Gen Z members were arrested following a call for demonstrations to protest slow institutional changes and inadequate corruption investigations. Several remained in custody for more than ten days under charges of “endangering state security,” a classification that permits detention for up to fifteen days. Amnesty International condemned the arrests as arbitrary and warned of an emerging climate of fear. Randrianirina accused the protesters of receiving financial support from certain politicians and foreign sources, allegations the activists have disputed.

Whether Randrianirina’s two-year electoral timeline holds, and whether the judicial process against former security officials proceeds beyond Ravalomanana’s conviction, will be the tests that determine how far Madagascar’s transition has actually traveled from the events of September 2025.