Environmental activist Henri Rakotoarisoa was brutally killed last Thursday near Moramanga, a city located in eastern Madagascar. The news was disclosed today by RFI, which specifies that behind this heinous murder there is the hand of about forty timber traffickers.
Rakotoarisoa was seventy and had been fighting for two years to loudly denounce the illegal logging of which Madagascar is a victim. He was the leader of the VOI, an association that fights to protect the last trace of the forest between Manjakandriana and Andramasina, two districts of Moramanga.
Ndranto Razakamanarina, president of Alliance Voahary Gasy (AVG), a platform that brings together associations that fight for environmental protection, said:
We found him with his hands tied, his heart and throat stuck
A conflict between activists and traffickers that had been going on since 2019. A member of the environmentalist association of which the activist was a member expressed himself on the latter:
They were individuals from a neighboring city probably paid to illegally exploit the forest.
The decision by Rakotoarisoa and his companions to set up an association to obtain the transfer of forest management to the ministry dates back to last year. The day before the tragic assassination, a general assembly of the association was held to define the future arrival of the agents of the ministry. The traffickers didn't like it, says the activist alongside Henri Rakotoarisoa in these years of struggle. As specified by RFI, such a murder of an environmental activist is unprecedented in the history of the country.
The trafficking of timber has been a plague that has been affecting Madagascar for years, the victim of a deforestation of the country's forests which, if not stopped, could lead to a real ecological disaster.
References:
https://en.pressbee.net/show1410229.html
