PostedAugust 29, 2022, 5:41 PM
MadagascarPolice open fire on civilians who wanted to enter a barracks
In Madagascar, four suspects have been arrested in the investigation into the kidnapping of an albino child. The gendarmes had to defend themselves once morest the angry crowd, leaving 14 dead and 28 injured.
The gendarmes say they had “no other choice but to defend themselves”.
photo d’illustration AFP
Fourteen people were killed and 28 injured on Monday in Madagascar, following the gendarmes opened fire on angry residents, around a dark case of kidnapping. “The gendarmes fired on the crowd,” said Jean Brunelle Razafintsiandraofa, deputy for the Ikongo district, 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 at the hospital in the morning, five died.
Around 11 a.m. (10 a.m. in Switzerland), 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 seem determined to take the law into their own hands. In the morning, they went to the gendarmerie barracks and asked that the four suspects be handed over to them, according to Jean Brunelle Razafintsiandraofa.
They tried to force their way
According to a person close to the gendarmerie, at least 500 people landed, some armed with “bladed weapons” and “machetes”. “There were negotiations, the villagers insisted,” she says. 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 witness.
The Malagasy police are regularly singled out by civil society for human rights violations, which are rarely prosecuted.
(AFP)