France returns skull of king beheaded during colonial era to Madagascar

By Amarachi Orie and Philippe Cordier, CNN

France has returned three skulls to Madagascar more than a century after they were taken, including one believed to be that of a 19th-century Malagasy king who was beheaded by French troops.

The repatriation of the skulls to the island nation off the southeastern coast of Africa marks the first time France has implemented a 2023 law enabling the return of human remains to a country for funeral purposes.

France conquered the kingdoms of the Sakalava people in western Madagascar in the 1890s and integrated the Sakalava into a newly formed French colony.

One of the three Sakalava skulls returned to Madagascar, which gained independence from France in 1960, is presumed to be that of King Toera, the French Ministry of Culture said in a statement Tuesday. He was executed by French troops in 1897, according to Reuters.

The other two skulls belonged to two generals who fought with the king, Madagascar’s Ministry of Communications and Culture said in a statement Tuesday announcing the return of the “heroes.”

The skulls had been kept in collections held by France’s National Museum of Natural History until they were formally handed over at a ceremony at the culture ministry on Tuesday.

“I welcome the return of these three skulls, including that of King Toera of the Sakalava people, an origin shared by nearly a third of the Malagasy population,” Fetra Rakotondrasoava, permanent secretary of Madagascar’s Ministry of Culture, who co-chaired the Malagasy-French Committee of Researchers working on the identification of the skulls, told CNN on Wednesday.

“This is not only the repatriation of human remains, but the return of a part of our history and memory,” he said, adding: “We will now be able to honor these remains as they should be. This moment carries significance for the Malagasy people and for all nations engaged in the restitution of their heritage.”

Madagascar’s Communication and Culture Minister, Volamiranty Donna Mara, said at the ceremony that the human remains, including that of “our great, indeed very great, King Toera,” are “not mere objects in a collection” but the link, “invisible and indelible, which binds our present to our past.”

“Their absence, for more than a century, 128 years, has been an open wound at the heart of the Great Island (Madagascar), and especially for the Sakalava community of Menabe,” she continued.

Madagascar’s culture ministry said the skulls will be reburied in Menabe, in the west of the island.

Speaking at the handover, French Culture Minister Rachida Dati said the ceremony “marks a historic event between France and Madagascar.”

She added that the joint Scientific Committee, established in October to examine Madagascar’s request for restitution, “has once again enabled us to appreciate the significance of the figure of King Toera, for your fellow citizens as a whole and for the Sakalava people in particular: for their identity, their dignity, their self-awareness, and the bond they wish to forge between past and future.”

In 2017, French President Emmanuel Macron said in a speech in Burkina Faso that “within the next five years, I want to see the conditions put in place so as to allow for the temporary or definitive restitution of African cultural heritage to Africa.”

He then commissioned a report released in 2018 that recommended that thousands of African artifacts looted during the colonial era be pulled out of French museums and returned to the continent.

A similar push for restitution is being made in the United Kingdom, where lawmakers and campaigners released a report in March calling for an end to the display of human remains in museums and the sale of human body parts in auction houses.

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