“Please do what you can to get pressure on the . government to release these men and stop targeting the church and its radio station,” Lala Rasendrahasina, the president of Church of Jesus Christ in Madagascar (FJKM), said in a statement after the journalists’ arrest.
Rasendrahasina said that Didier Ravohangiharison, the director of the church-run Radio Fahazavana, and journalist Lolo Ratsimba had been accused of colluding with an attempted army mutiny in December. The two are being held at Antanimora prison in the country’s capital, Antananarivo, the church leader stated.
Madagascar, an island nation located in the Indian Ocean, has been tense since March when, following weeks of protests, President Marc Ravalomanana was ousted by Andry Rajoelina, the former mayor of Antananarivo.
In December, Rajoelina rejected internationally-mediated power-sharing agreements and announced parliamentary elections for March 20 over the objections of opposition leaders.
The FJKM’s Rasendrahasina was briefly detained by the military following the removal of former president Ravalomanana, a member and elected lay vice-president of the church.
About 2.5 million of the country’s 20 million people belong to the FJKM, making it Madagascar’s biggest Protestant denomination. Some observers say that during Ravalomanana’s time in office the lines between Church and State had been blurred.
Rasendrahasina said the detention of the church journalists followed a series of actions by the government against the radio station and its employees.
“Please encourage human rights organizations to take up their case and campaign for their release. Please contact officials of your government to ask them to help Didier and Lolo,” the Protestant leader urged in his statement circulated to church partners around the world.
He said Radio Fahazavana had been forced off the air in December by the government, which had accused the station’s journalists of supporting violent opposition to the authorities. In June radio station director Ravohangiharison’s wife had been detained, apparently to force the journalist to turn himself in for questioning by security agents, the FJKM leader said.
Still, some church leaders in Madagascar said the woes of the FJKM resulted from it being involved in politics.
“It is all politics. We need to say the truth. They [journalists] involved themselves with politics, even when they worked for the Church,” Anglican Bishop Jean Paul Solo of Toamisina told Ecumenical News International on January 12.
