an environmental defender murdered by villagers involved in timber trafficking

Malagasy environmental protection activist Henri Rakotoarisoa was beaten to death on June 1, 2022 by around 40 villagers who live from timber trafficking in the east of the Big Island.

President of the local community Mialo, Henri Rakotoarisoa, aged 70, had denounced for two years the cutting of precious wood on a plot of primary forest. This defender of the environment was known for his fight for the protection of the forest and biodiversity. The whistleblower would have been brutally killed when he came to discuss with villagers of the commune paid to illegally exploit the forest.

Claiming their act, thirty-seven people went a few hours later to the local gendarmerie.

Perceived as a nuisance, Henri Rakotoarisoa had difficult relations with the villagers of Andramasina living off local forest resources. Especially since the defender of this forest, sheltering a large nature reserve, asked for its classification as protected areas.

The day before the assassination, a general meeting of his association was held to prepare for the arrival of agents from the ministry. “These agents were to help us demarcate the plots. The traffickers did not like it”, according to testimony collected by RFI correspondent Laure Verneau.

Malagasy environmental activists are regularly intimidated by traffickers, necessarily with complicity at the highest level to organize the export of these precious woods. If crimes against the environment often benefit from a certain impunity, such an assassination is unprecedented in the recent history of the Big Island.