Three people in my circle have gone missing in recent weeks. Two remain unfound after nearly a month. The third was my driver’s son, found alive about 50 kilometers from the neighborhood where he disappeared. The relief could have ended the story there, but yesterday, my driver said something I cannot erase from my mind: ‘Madam, it is easy to talk about when you haven’t lived it. But I have. If I were in the place of the parents who still haven’t found their child, I would no longer have a reason to live.’
I found nothing to say, and I believe there was nothing to say. He was lucky to get his son back, but he knows better than anyone what those weeks of waiting mean, and that is why he measures what others continue to endure without him. Writing a well-crafted column on insecurity remains easy as long as you are not on the other side of the phone that never rings with good news.
The general toll is dry and chilling: 200 disappearances recorded across the country since the start of this wave, 175 people found alive, and at least eight minors among the victims. In markets, courtyards, neighborhood groups, and on social media, the wildest theories circulate due to a lack of certainty about the exact causes. When uncertainty is total, imagination takes over from information, and parents take over from the State.
The current government describes these acts as destabilization, orchestrated according to them by enemies of the Nation. Whether this explanation is true, partial, or just one lead among others, one thing should take precedence over political quarrels: whether it is a conspiracy or organized banditry, it is ordinary children and families who pay the price, and it is on them that every resource and decision should be focused.
We must salute what is being done on the ground. More police, soldiers, and gendarmes are already patrolling the capital with limited resources and under additional pressure: that of a population at its wit’s end, increasingly inclined to take justice into its own hands. Yet, these are the same forces that, in early July, intervened to prevent several lynchings, even if, sadly, a man was burned alive by a mob in Maintirano because he could not be protected in time.
In mid-July, an institutional voice supported this call for calm. The Episcopal Conference of Madagascar broke its silence, speaking of a climate of terror, demanding transparency on the causes of this wave of disappearances, and urging the population not to give in to vengeance. A message that law enforcement officers themselves carry, often without being heard.
As fear grows, parents do the work that no one can do for them: group travel, forbidden outings after 4 p.m., phones left on at night just in case. This constant vigilance has a price that no one calculates: exhausted mothers and fathers adding fear for their children to an already endless list of burdens.
And as if to prove everything above right, I just learned news that freezes me: the only son of a close friend was kidnapped and killed in horrific conditions in early July. I blame myself for only knowing now, as if the pain of our loved ones must also get lost somewhere between two official figures before reaching us. This flag at half-mast is no longer, for me, an abstract symbol.
So, destabilization or not, the urgency remains the same: focus all the State’s efforts on protecting a people who are today the prey of malicious networks, and give law enforcement the means to do their job without also having to contain the anger of those they are trying to protect. As long as a father has to say he would have no reason to live in someone else’s place, the priority can only be there: find every child still missing, and restore to the Malagasy people the right to no longer be afraid.
Captured & Published at: 2026-07-29 05:38:44 (Madagascar Local Time EAT)
Original Source: https://www.lexpress.mg/2026/07/facile-raconter-quand-on-ne-la-pas-vecu.html