History between brackets

To the glory of the heroes...

In the name of the innocent victims ...

To the memory of my father ...

Orléans, march, 1997

The forgotten massacers of Madagasikara

One hundred thousand deads, this is the estimate of the number of victims of the french repression in Madagasikara in 47 x 48. A dirty war ignored in France, thirteen years before the proclamation of the independance of the "big Island ".

Fifty years ago, France repressed the Insurrection

On the night of the 29th of march 47, started the rebellion against the french presence. At Moramanga, on the Toamasina-Antananarivo railway, the insurgents attacked senegalese Snipers, throug h failing to take their camp.

Several officers were killed in their quarters. Furthen action took place close to Manakara against areas where the French lived, again with limited success.

This events were enough to spark the fight of the rural masses who were hostile to the french administration and the colonists, through it is true that since the end of the conquest of Madagasikara in 1896, Malagasy national sentiment stayed alive.

Like other colonies else where, the Second War had weakened the domination of France. From Vichy power passed to the english, them to the Free French. But if the latter granted some freedoms, they imposed on the population a war effort considered unbearable.

Colonial War

Added to discontent caused by the conscription of manual labor, shortages and inflation was the resentement of malagasy ex-soldiers who had been repatriated despite their long years of service to a France they considered to be ungreatful . Finding leaders among this soldiers, the revolt spred, taking advantage of the small number of french soldiers in the colony at most 6 000 men.

However in mid-April, the first reinforcement, a total of 18 000 men -parachutists an african snipers - arrived. The Ramadier governement wanted to quickly get on the situation. Facing a modern army whose nombers rose to 30 000 men the insurgents were equiped with assegais, machetes and few rifles, the war continued, however, until the end of 1948 and was accompanied by a pityless repression. It struck first at the M.D.R. - Mouvement Démocratique de la Rénovation Malgache (Democratic movement for the Rebuilding of Malagasy) - a legal party who had three deputies in the Assembly that had been elected in november 1946. It sought independance through negotiations. Hostile to a revolt provokek by secret societies PANAMA - Patriotes Nationalistes Malgaches (Malagasy Nationalist Patriots) - and JINA (the name of a bird), it had openly warned its militants against armed struggle.

But for the holders of french politic power the opportunity to crush a popular naionalist party was to tempting. Militants, elected representatives of the M.D.R.M were hunted and tortured despitetheir parlementary imunity, deputies Ravoahangy and Rabemananjara were arrested in Antananarivo on the 12th of April. The 6th of June, a third Raseta sufferd the same fate upon living the Palais Bourbon where the majority of his colleagues had just voted to take away his imunity, on which only the communist and overseas deputies had opposed.

In Madagascar, French troops waged a real colonial war of which the French press spoke very little. The french stayed ignorant of the reconquest and the atrocities that were comitted. The cost was particulary heavy. 1 900 Malagasy having "collaborated with the French" were killed by the insurgents, as well as 500 soldiers and colonists. the number of independance activists is an another story: combats, massacers, the burning of villages, tortures, famine would have killed 100 000 people. At the end of 1948, General Garbey, the French chief of staff spoke of 86 000 victims, but in 1960, this official figure was 11 342 dead !...

"Terrifying" reprisals

More revealing than figures is the exposition of the methods used two years after the end of the Nazi Barbarism. An extract from an article generally hostile to the rebells published in France-Soir, on the 8th of May 1947 and read in the french parlement by the socialist Lamine Gueye to the fury of his colleagues give us an idea : "The reprisals are terrifying. Malagasy prisoners have been put in planes and thrown out above rebell villages us "warning bombs". In other places, the rebells were locked in cabines and burnt alive.

"Methods wich were later use in Algeria were employed", stated J.Planchais, historian (1).

"All of this is still unknown : One 6th grade book out of two doesn't even allude to the malagasy rebellion in their chapter about decolonisation. However this event shows how the IV th Republiik couldn't admit the emancipation of people in his colonial empire, dressed as "French Union". the first independentist revendcations, France always reacted with brutality. Scared of being weaked throug the lose of her colonies she failed wanting keep them too much."

Jean-Claude MUTEAU ,historien

(1) L'Empire embrasé, Denöël Paris 1990