Antananarivo - The wife of Madagascar's ex-leader Marc Ravalomanana on Friday called for the crisis-wracked island nation to “rise up” after her husband was detained upon a controversial return from exile.
“Rise up because you are Malagasy and it is your right. Free Madagascar from its torture,” Lalao Ravalomanana said in a radio broadcast.
After visiting her husband, who is effectively being held under house arrest in Diego Suarez in the north of the Indian Ocean island, his wife said he was being held in undignified conditions.
“It's not fair, it's illegal and it's not dignified,” she said.
Guy Rivo, a spokesman for Ravalomanana, told AFP the former president was shut in a bedroom with a door that could only be opened from the outside.
He said he had been refused a television and a telephone and claimed he was not even allowed a pen.
Rivo said the family hoped to negotiate his release so that he could live in the family's residence in the capital, Antananarivo.
Marc Ravalomanana, who was sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment with hard labour, slipped back into Madagascar on Monday, five years after a military coup and two months of violent protests forced him to flee first to Swaziland and then to South Africa.
The African Union has described Ravalomanana's return as an “unacceptable provocation.”
Madagascar had on several occasions blocked efforts by Ravalomanana to return home.
In 2012, a plane he was travelling on was turned back in mid-flight as he headed for the Indian Ocean island.
Ravalomanana's rival Andry Rajoelina seized power from him.
Former finance minister Hery Rajaonarimampianina become president in January.
Sapa-AFP