A British parliamentarian threw gentle on the suspected thefts on the British Museum, saying the incident uncovered the “insulting ridiculousness” of the museum’s refusal to return the contested gadgets to their nation of origin as a consequence of safety causes, The Guardian reported.
Bell Ribeiro-Addy, the Labour MP for Streatham, mentioned a 1963 legislation prohibiting the return of relics akin to Parthenon marbles and the Benin bronzes ought to 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,” mentioned Ribeiro-Addy, who can be 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 feedback got here after the museum mentioned final week that it recovered among the 2,000 stolen gadgets, together with jewelry and gems. The police have been investigating the matter.
On August 25, the museum’s director Hartwig Fischer tendered his resignation, saying he accepted duty for his failure to swiftly reply to warnings in 2021 about suspected thefts of artefacts. The museum’s deputy director, Jonathan Williams, is not going to perform his duties until an unbiased evaluate into the matter is completed.
Fischer will proceed to serve his tenure till an interim director is appointed, which will probably be reportedly introduced by the top of this week. A British Museum spokesperson mentioned the method was occurring with out additional delays.
George Osborne, the previous Conservative chancellor who chairs the museum’s board of trustees, mentioned the museum recovering among the stolen gadgets 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 mentioned.
The revelation of stolen artefacts has infused contemporary momentum into calls from some quarters to return the gadgets to the nation 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 mentioned.
Edited By:
Prateek Chakraborty
Published On:
Aug 28, 2023
