France Returns Beheaded Malagasy King’s Skull After 128 Years
By Joseph Iyaji | Akahi News

In a historic move, France has returned the skull of a Malagasy king, believed to be King Toera, decapitated by French troops during a massacre in 1897. The restitution, announced on Tuesday, also included the remains of two other members of the Sakalava ethnic group.

The skulls had been kept at Paris’s national history museum alongside hundreds of other human remains collected during France’s colonial campaigns in the Indian Ocean region. French Culture Minister Rachida Dati acknowledged the troubling history, stating, “These skulls entered the national collections in circumstances that clearly violated human dignity and in a context of colonial violence.”

Madagascar’s Culture Minister, Volamiranty Donna Mara, described the handover as “an immensely significant gesture”, highlighting it as a “new era of cooperation” between France and Madagascar. She added that the absence of the remains had left “an open wound in the heart of our island” for 128 years.

While a joint scientific committee confirmed that the skulls belonged to the Sakalava people, it could only “presume” that one of them was King Toera, according to Dati.

The restitution marks the first time human remains have been returned under a 2023 French law aimed at facilitating such repatriations, signalling a step toward reconciling colonial-era injustices.

Akahi News http://www.akahinews.org