France returns human skulls to Madagascar, 128 years after French massacre

One of 3 skulls returned to Madagascar is believed to beryllium to King Toera, who was slain by French assemblage forces.

France has returned to Madagascar 3 quality skulls kept astatine a Paris depository for 128 years, aft they were looted during the assemblage period, including 1 believed to beryllium that of a Madagascan king decapitated by French troops.

The skull, presumed to beryllium that of King Toera, and 2 others from the Sakalava taste group, were formally handed implicit astatine a ceremonial held astatine the French Ministry of Culture connected Tuesday.

French troops beheaded King Toera during a massacre of locals successful 1897, with his skull past taken backmost to France arsenic a trophy, and placed successful Paris’s nationalist past depository alongside hundreds of different remains from the Indian Ocean island.

“These skulls entered the nationalist collections successful circumstances that intelligibly violated quality dignity and successful a discourse of assemblage violence,” French Minister of Culture Rachida Dati said astatine the event.

The French minister’s Madagascar counterpart, Volamiranty Donna Mara, praised the handover, saying the taking of the skulls “has been, for much than a century, 128 years, an unfastened coiled successful the bosom of our island”.

“They are not collectors’ items; they are the invisible and indelible nexus that unites our contiguous to our past,” Mara said.

Video from the lawsuit showed 3 boxes draped successful accepted cloth being carried successful a solemn procession to the handover ceremonial successful the ornate surroundings of France’s Culture Ministry.

A associated technological committee confirmed that the skulls were from the Sakalava people, but said it could lone “presume” that 1 belonged to King Toera, Dati said.

The lawsuit marked the archetypal restitution of quality remains since France passed a instrumentality facilitating the instrumentality of specified artefacts successful 2023.

With a 3rd of the 30,000 specimens astatine Paris’s Musee de l’Homme being skulls and skeletons from astir the world, countries including Australia and Argentina person filed their ain restitution requests for the instrumentality of ancestral remains.

During a sojourn successful April to the Madagascan capital, Antananarivo, French President Emmanuel Macron spoke of seeking “forgiveness” for France’s “bloody and tragic” colonisation of Madagascar, which declared independency successful 1960 aft much than 60 years of assemblage rule.

The skulls are acceptable to instrumentality to the Indian Ocean land connected Sunday, wherever they volition beryllium buried.

Minister Mara said the Madagascan authorities plans to honour the remains successful a tribute coinciding with the day of King Toera’s execution successful precocious August 1897, during France’s colonisation of the Indian Ocean island.

Source:

Al Jazeera and quality agencies