A British parliamentarian threw light on the suspected thefts at the British Museum, saying the incident exposed the “insulting ridiculousness” of the museum’s refusal to return the contested items to their country of origin due to security reasons, The Guardian reported.
Bell Ribeiro-Addy, the Labour MP for Streatham, said a 1963 law prohibiting the return of relics such as Parthenon marbles and the Benin bronzes should be overhauled.
“One of the most insulting reasons that they’ve given is that the other countries that these items belong to would either not be able to take care of them or they are likely to be stolen. But you’ve got people in this country putting them on eBay,” said Ribeiro-Addy, who is also the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Afrikan reparations.
“What makes it more awful is that they’ve been so lax about the suspected theft of other people’s items that they haven’t even bothered to assess what it is that they have âæ to know exactly what’s been stolen,” she added.
The parliamentarian’s comments came after the museum said last week that it recovered some of the 2,000 stolen items, including jewellery and gems. The police were investigating the matter.
On August 25, the museum’s director Hartwig Fischer tendered his resignation, saying he accepted responsibility for his failure to swiftly respond to warnings in 2021 about suspected thefts of artefacts. The museum’s deputy director, Jonathan Williams, will not carry out his duties till an independent review into the matter is done.
Fischer will continue to serve his tenure until an interim director is appointed, which will be reportedly announced by the end of this week. A British Museum spokesperson said the process was happening without further delays.
George Osborne, the former Conservative chancellor who chairs the museum’s board of trustees, said the museum recovering some of the stolen items was a “silver lining to a dark cloud”.
“It’s certainly been damaging to the British Museum’s reputation. I think that’s sort of stating the obvious and that’s why I’m apologising on behalf of the museum. We believe we’ve been the victim of thefts over a long period of time and, frankly, more could have been done to prevent them,” he said.
The revelation of stolen artefacts has infused fresh momentum into calls from some quarters to return the items to the country of origin.
“We have partnerships with museums and communities around the world and we lend more than 4,000 objects annually. We are dedicated to making our collection accessible to as many people as possible,” A British Museum spokesperson was quoted as saying by The Guardian.
“We take care of all the objects in our collection extremely seriously, and thankfully, incidents of this kind are incredibly rare. We have already revised relevant security arrangements and launched an independent review that will make further recommendations to ensure this doesn’t happen again,” the spokesperson said.
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