PARIS: France has returned three colonial-era human skulls to Madagascar, including one believed to belong to a Malagasy king beheaded by French troops during a nineteenth-century massacre.
The skull presumed to be that of King Toera and two others from the Sakalava ethnic group were formally handed over during a ceremony at the French culture ministry on Tuesday.
French troops decapitated King Toera in 1897 and took his skull to France as a war trophy before placing it in Paris’s national history museum alongside hundreds of other remains from the Indian Ocean island.
French Culture Minister Rachida Dati described the circumstances of their acquisition as violating human dignity within a context of colonial violence while calling the return moment historic.
Her Madagascar counterpart Volamiranty Donna Mara welcomed the restitution as an immensely significant gesture for her nation.
She stated that their absence had represented an open wound in the heart of the island for more than a century, specifically one hundred twenty-eight years.
France has increasingly sought to confront its colonial legacy by returning both artefacts and human remains from its museum collections to their countries of origin.
This restitution marks the first under a 2023 law that facilitates the return of human remains from France’s public collections.
A joint scientific committee confirmed the skulls originated from the Sakalava people but could only presume one belonged to King Toera according to Minister Dati.
President Emmanuel Macron has acknowledged past French abuses in Africa since his 2017 election.
During an April visit to Antananarivo, Macron spoke of seeking forgiveness for France’s bloody and tragic colonisation of Madagascar which gained independence in 1960 after sixty years of colonial rule.
The remains will officially return to the Indian Ocean island this Sunday. – AFP