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<\/p>\n\n\tFrance has returned three colonial-era human skulls to Madagascar, including one believed to have belonged to a Malagasy king executed by French troops in a 19th-century massacre.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe skull, presumed to be that of King Toera, and two others from the Sakalava ethnic group were handed over to Malagasy representatives at the French Culture Ministry on Monday. French colonial forces killed Toera in 1897, and his skull was taken to France, where it was later displayed in Paris\u2019s National Museum of Natural History alongside other human remains taken from Madagascar, an island off the east African coast in the Indian Ocean.<\/p>\n
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\n\t\u201cThese skulls entered the national collections in circumstances that clearly violated human dignity and in a context of colonial violence,\u201d said French Culture Minister Rachida Dati, describing the moment as \u201chistoric.\u201d Her Madagascar counterpart, Volamiranty Donna Mara, welcomed the return of the skulls as \u201can immensely significant gesture.\u201d \u201cTheir absence has been, for more than a century, 128 years, an open wound in the heart of our island,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\n\tFrance has in recent years <\/a>accelerated its return of artworks looted in the colonial era to their countries of origin. But President Emmanuel Macron\u2019s broader ambitions for restitution<\/a> have been hampered by the country\u2019s heritage code, which classifies museum holdings as \u201cinalienable.\u201d Much of his administration\u2019s legislative work has focused on streamlining the historically arduous process of deaccessioning. Earlier this year, the government introduced legislation<\/a> that would make it easier to restitute objects from the national collection that were taken from states \u201cdeprived of them through illicit appropriation\u201d between 1815 and 1972.<\/p>\n \n\tThe law would apply to items acquired through \u201ctheft, looting, forced transfers, or donations made under coercion or violence,\u201d or taken from individuals without the legal authority to dispose of them, the culture ministry said. The bill is scheduled to be debated in France\u2019s Senate in September.<\/p>\n \n\tSince his election in 2017, Macron has made a particular effort to address the lasting trauma of France\u2019s former African colonies. In 2023, the National Assembly overcame Senate opposition to transfer ownership of 26 stolen royal artifacts from the Mus\u00e9e du Quai Branly\u2013Jacques Chirac to Benin, along with one object from the Army Museum to Senegal. Those works were returned on the condition that they \u201ccontinue to be preserved and presented to the public in places dedicated to this [cultural] function.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tDuring a visit to Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar, in April, Macron vowed to seek \u201cforgiveness\u201d for France\u2019s \u201cbloody and tragic\u201d colonial years on the island, according to Le Monde.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"France has returned three colonial-era human skulls to Madagascar, including one believed to have belonged to a Malagasy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":376104,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5309],"tags":[2000,299,36,95127],"class_list":{"0":"post-376103","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-france","11":"tag-restitution"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115097547965511926","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=376103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376103\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/376104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=376103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=376103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=376103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}