Madagascan gendarmes confirmed on Tuesday that they killed 19 people when they fired on an angry crowd who had tried the day before to enter their barracks to take justice into their own hands after the disappearance of an albino child.
“Nineteen people lost their lives and 21 wounded are still being treated” at the hospital in Ikongo, the small town in the southeast of the island where the clashes took place, the gendarmes said in a statement. adding that an investigation is underway.
The head doctor of the local hospital, Dr Tango Oscar Toky, contacted by telephone by AFP on Tuesday, confirmed the death toll.
The gendarmes, who claim that calm has now returned, announced on Monday a first assessment of 11 deceased victims.
On Tuesday morning, the local hospital was still awaiting the arrival of injured people who needed to be evacuated, according to Dr Toky, describing serious injuries.
Since last week, the town of Ikongo, immersed in the mountains and about 350 km from the capital Antananarivo, has been in shock: a child, albino, has disappeared and the authorities suspect a kidnapping.
In this large island of southern Africa, people with albinism are regularly the target of violence, often in connection with certain beliefs.
More than a dozen kidnappings, attacks and murders have been reported there in the past two years, according to the United Nations.
“We could have avoided it”
After the disappearance of the child, four suspects were arrested by the gendarmes and placed in detention in the barracks of Ikongo.
But angry residents wanted to take the law into their own hands.
They went to the gendarmerie barracks on Monday and asked that the suspects be handed over to them, Jean Brunelle Razafintsiandraofa, deputy for the district, told AFP.
According to a source from the gendarmerie present on the spot, at least 500 people arrived, some of whom were armed with “bladed weapons” and “machetes”.
A security perimeter is then installed, and the gendarmes try to lower the tension to “avoid a bloodbath”, explained Monday the commander Andry Rakotondrazaka during a press conference.
He then spoke of “provocations”, people armed with “long-bladed knives and sticks”, as well as throwing stones. Then the crowd tried to cross the security perimeter.
The gendarmes say they first used tear gas and fired warning shots.
“But, as a last resort”, they “had no choice but to resort to self-defense”, explained the commander of the gendarmerie.
“It’s a very sad event and we could have avoided it, but what happened happened,” he regretted.
They “fired on the crowd”, for his part was indignant MP Razafintsiandraofa, who indicated that he wanted to request a parliamentary inquiry.
Malagasy security forces are regularly singled out by civil society for human rights violations, which are rarely prosecuted.