France has returned three human skulls to Madagascar, including one believed to belong to King Toera, who was executed and decapitated by French colonial troops in 1897.

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The skulls, all from the Sakalava ethnic group, were handed over on Tuesday during a ceremony at the French Ministry of Culture. They had been kept in Paris for more than a century after being seized during France’s colonial campaign on the island.

King Toera was killed during a massacre carried out by French forces in 1897. His skull was later transported to France and placed in the national history museum, alongside hundreds of other remains taken from Madagascar.

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

Madagascar’s Culture Minister, Volamiranty Donna Mara, described the restitution as long overdue. “The taking of the skulls has been, for more than a century, 128 years, an open wound in the heart of our island,” she said. “They are not collectors’ items; they are the invisible and indelible link that unites our present to our past.”

During the handover, video footage showed three boxes draped in traditional cloth carried in a solemn procession through the ornate ministry building. A joint scientific committee confirmed the remains belonged to the Sakalava people, but could only “presume” that one was King Toera’s, Dati added.

This marks the first restitution of human remains since France passed a 2023 law enabling the return of such items. Paris’s Musée de l’Homme currently holds some 30,000 specimens, a third of them skulls and skeletons taken from around the world. Other countries, including Australia and Argentina, have also filed requests for repatriation.

French President Emmanuel Macron acknowledged during a visit to Antananarivo in April the “bloody and tragic” history of France’s colonisation of Madagascar, which lasted until independence in 1960, and spoke of seeking forgiveness.

The skulls will be flown back to Madagascar on Sunday, where the government plans to bury them in a tribute ceremony timed with the anniversary of King Toera’s execution in late August 1897.

The return highlights growing demands from Global South nations for the restitution of human remains and cultural property taken during colonial rule, as European museums face increasing pressure to confront the legacies of empire.

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