Two Europeans were chased, hanged and then burned in Nosy Be - a popular tourist inland in Madagascar for alleged "human organ" trafficking. The crowd chased them after locals found the lifeless body of an eight-year-old boy without genitals and tongue. A local man is also said to have been caught and questioned by the locals who later killed him and set his body ablaze in a separate incident.

Even as authorities await further details of the macabre incident, the incident reveals the underpinning of another grotesque and rampant social evil in Madagascar - child prostitution.

Media reports confirm that among the two Europeans, one was French. The nationality of the second man was unknown. Some reports suggest he was French, meanwhile, others say he was an Italian national.

There are around 8,000 long-term foreign nationals mainly French and Italian who are residents of Nosy Be. Most of them take Malagasy women as local partners to open bars, in the popular tourist destination, under the property law which requires foreign investors to have local partners.

As news of the boy's disappearance spread unrest grew among the locals. They attacked a local police station where a suspected local was being held. Police opened fire to disperse the crowd. Reports say, one person was killed and several injured in the firing. The local residents then went on a rampage, setting fire to tyres, blocking roads and torching houses of security personnel.

Despite its vast natural resources, Madagascar, the world's the fourth-largest island, with a population of over 20 million, is one of the least developed.

With growing sense of socio-economic insecurity, there is discontent among the people against the security forces and lack of trust in the state. Lack of trust in state machinery has led to vigilantism among the locals. In Sept. 2012, villagers are reported to have killed at least 67 cattle thieves when a gang of 100 cattle rustlers simultaneously attacked three villages. Belief in the supernatural is also rampant in a country where, approximately half the population practice traditional faith forms.

Even as French authorities await further details of the exact circumstances under which their incident happened, the lynching may have the undertone of a social evil rampant in the impoverished country where a vast majority of the population live on less than two dollars a day.

According to the Madagascar Trafficking in Persons Report 2013 released by the local U.S. Mission, trafficking of sex and labour is a key social issue due to lack of economic development and the breakdown of law and order since the March 2009 political crises in the country.

The reports says, rural Malagasy children, are often subjected to domestic servitude and prostitution within the country. It finds a significant increase in commercial sex trade involving the exploitation of children, as young as seven years old. They are fraudulently recruited and pushed into prostitution.

The report also said that in several cases, children have been pushed into prostitution by their parents who directly negotiate with clients to earn money.

Interestingly, according to the report, Nosy Be is one of the coastal cities where cases of child sex tourism have increased during the past year. The other cities are Toamasina, Antsiranana, Mahajunga and the country's capital Antananarivo.

Importantly, the report noted that, "Most child sex tourists are French nationals, with some reports of sexual exploitation by Italian and other Western nationals."

In recent years, community-based effort against sex tourism in Nosy Be has increased. Posters have been put up in the city warning against child sex work. However, the falling economic scenario has made the struggle difficult to sustain.

A 2010 news report in IRIN quoted Chatian Andriamahasolo, a local municipal councillor in Ambatoloaka as saying: "Foreigners give a bad image to Nosy Be, but we need foreigners to bring in money [to the island]."

Whatever the cause, with the latest incident of vigilantism in Nosy Be - the most important and busiest tourist destination in Madagascar - the country's tourism industry, seeking to revive itself, is expected to take another hit.