Fourteen people were killed and 28 injured Monday in Madagascar after the gendarmes opened fire on angry residents, around a dark case of kidnapping, according to local and medical sources to AFP.
“The police […] fired on the crowd,” said Jean Brunelle Razafintsiandraofa, deputy for the Ikongo district (east), where the incident took place.
“Nine people died instantly,” said Tango Oscar Toky, chief physician at the local hospital. And out of 33 wounded received in the morning, five died in hospital, he adds.
Around 8 a.m. local time, shots rang out in Ikongo. Since last week, the small town has been in shock: a child, albino, has disappeared and the authorities suspect a kidnapping.
On the large island in the Indian Ocean, people with albinism are regularly the target of violence. More than a dozen kidnappings, attacks and murders have been reported in the past two years, according to the United Nations.
Four suspects were arrested by the gendarmes. But the inhabitants are determined to take justice into their own hands.
In the morning, they went to the gendarmerie barracks and demanded that the four suspects be handed over to them, according to Mr. Razafintsiandraofa.
According to a source from the gendarmerie to AFP, at least 500 people disembarked, some armed with “bladed weapons” and “machetes”.
“There were negotiations, the villagers insisted,” says the source. The gendarmes then decided to throw smoke bombs to disperse the crowd, and fired a few shots in the air.
But residents continued to try to force their way into the barracks. “We had no choice but to defend ourselves…” said the same source.
The Malagasy police are regularly singled out by civil society for human rights violations, which are rarely prosecuted.