France returns a monarch’s skull killed through a colonial era

The leader of King of Malagasius, killed by French troops during a war by the colonial era, was officially returned to Madagascar.

The transfer of the skull to King Toer – and those of two other members of his court – took place at a ceremony at the Ministry of Culture in Paris.

The skulls were brought to France in the late 19th century and are stored in the Natural History Museum in the French capital.

This is the first use of a new law designed to accelerate the return of human remains of collections in France.

“These skulls have entered the national collections in circumstances that clearly violate human dignity and in the context of colonial violence,” the Minister of French Culture Rachida Dati quoted the AFP agency at the ceremony.

In August 1897, a French power sent to uphold colonial control over the Menabev kingdom of Sakalava people in Western Madagascar, killed a local army.

King Toie was killed and beheaded: his head sent to Paris, where he was placed in the archives of the Natural History Museum.

Nearly 130 years later, pressure from the King’s descendants, as well as the nation’s government in the Indian Ocean, has opened the way to return the skull.

Madagascar’s Minister of Culture Volaramranty Donna Mara, who also made a speech on the show, said their return was a “significant gesture”, AFP reports.

“Their absence is more than a century … an open wound in the heart of our island,” she said.

This is not the first time the human remains of the colonial era have been returned from France.

The most famous was the South African woman who was called “HotTentot Venus”, which was once exposed to Europe and Whose body was taken home in 2012.S

But this is the first return under recent law, which makes the process much easier.

It is estimated that there are more than 20,000 human remains in France from all over the world for the scientific reasons alone in the Museum of Natural History.