In Madagascar, some among the older generations refer to it as the “tabataba” in Malagasy, the country’s national language, which means noise, or commotion, while others call it the “événements”, meaning the “events” in French, the second official language on the island. The euphemisms allude to an armed insurrection by the islanders, between March 1947 and the end of 1948, against France’s colonial rule, and which was brutally suppressed by a French army force of almost 20,000 soldiers.
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