France returns skull of beheaded king to Madagascar after 128 years

France on Tuesday returned three colonial-era skulls to Madagascar, including one believed to be that of a Malagasy king decapitated by French troops during a 19th-century massacre.

The skull, believed to belong to King Toera, was handed over in the first restitution of human remains since France passed a law facilitating their return in 2023, along with those of two other members of the Sakalava ethnic group

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French troops beheaded King Toera in 1897, with his skull then taken as a trophy to France.

It was placed in Paris’s national history museum alongside hundreds of other remains from the Indian Ocean island.

“These skulls entered the national collections in circumstances that clearly violated human dignity and in a context of colonial violence,” said French Culture Minister Rachida Dati.

Her Madagascar counterpart, Volamiranty Donna Mara, praised the handover as “an immensely significant gesture” that marked “a new era of cooperation” between the two countries.

“Their absence has been, for more than a century, 128 years, an open wound in the heart of our island,” she said.

A joint scientific committee confirmed the skulls were from the Sakalava people but said it could only “presume” that one belonged to King Toera, Dati said.