Three leaders of Orthodox movement arrested

ASMARA, Eritrea — The Eritrean government jailed three more leaders of the Orthodox Church’s Medhane Alem renewal movement  in April, cracking down on widespread reaction to the excommunication of 65 of the group’s members. A March 28 circular letter sent by the Eritrean Orthodox Church’s Holy Synod officially excommunicated 65 key members and coordinators of the long-established Sunday School movement within the Orthodox church. The expelled Christians reportedly had refused to confess that the Medhane Alem movement and its leaders were “heretics” whose objectives were to destroy the Eritrean Orthodox Church. A week later, April 4, three of the excommunicants were arrested and sent to prison. The three men were accused of instigating open resistance to the church’s decree banishing them from their mother church.