A group of five men, denouncing the " dispossession of Africa of its riches ", entered Friday at the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris, where they tore from its base a 19th century Bari funeral pole, before being arrested. by the police, AFP learned from concordant sources. A complaint has been filed by the museum and a police investigation is underway, it was said at Quai Branly, where we do not wish to comment.
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" Five individuals were arrested and placed in police custody on charges of 'attempted theft of a classified movable object in assembly', " said the Paris prosecutor's office, which entrusted the investigation to the police station of the 7th arrondissement. The five men filmed at length after entering the reopened museum on Tuesday, according to the video posted online.
We see one of the five men, who presents himself as a national of the Democratic Republic of Congo, unsealing the funeral pole, helping by another, before taking him down the halls.
While he is being filmed, the man shouts his criticisms against France: " we have decided to recover what belongs to us ". “ These goods were stolen from us during colonization. We leave with our property, we bring it home, ”he repeats to the guards who apostrophy and try to hold them back. At the end, the police come to arrest them.
Frank Riester condemns
Culture Minister Frank Riester condemned in a press release " with the utmost firmness " these acts " which damage heritage ". He noted that these men " formulated messages of a political nature and disputed the presence of this work, and others, in the French collections ". " If the debate on the restitution of works from the African continent is perfectly legitimate, it can in no way justify this type of action, " added Frank Riester.
" The work does not seem to have undergone any significant deterioration and the museum will take all measures without delay to carry out any required restorations ," said the minister. The question of the restitution of African works which arrived in French public museums during the colonization is particularly sensitive and controversial. The Quai Branly Museum has the main collection of early African arts.
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