Towards a framework law to facilitate the restitution of colonial objects: the French government presented Wednesday a much-awaited text of text in order to respond to the countries demanding the return of these cultural goods.
Presentation in the Council of Ministers, he plans to facilitate the exit of the works of the French collections by derogating from the principle of their inalienability without going through a tedious legislative process.
Applying in priority to African countries but of “universal geographic scope”, it aims to accelerate the return of cultural goods claimed by “states which, due to illicit appropriation, were deprived of it” between 1815 and 1972, according to the Ministry of Culture.
Acquired cultural goods are concerned “in a situation of theft, looting, assignment or liberality obtained by constraint or violence or of a person who could not dispose of it,” he said.
The text, concretization of a promise by President Emmanuel Macron launched in Ouagadougou in 2017, should be presented in September in the Senate.
It provides that instead of a specific law for each work or object, only a decree of the Council of State and the documented proof of its illicit appropriation are sufficient.
A bilateral commission associating French experts and historians with those of the applicant state will be responsible for this work, if necessary, according to the ministry.
Regarding the historical period retained, 1815 corresponds to the date of a settlement of Napoleonic conquests which is due to a first movement of restitution of works on a European scale. 1972 is that of the entry into application of the UNESCO International Convention protecting cultural goods against illegal traffic.
– “Holder” –
While thousands of pieces have already been returned to Africa around the world, France is “lagging behind”, according to researcher and anthropologist Saskia Cousin, specialist in the question.
So far, Paris has only returned 26 objects from the royal treasure of Abomey in Benin in 2021, as well as the Djidji Ayôkwé speaker drum this year in Côte d’Ivoire. A saber, supposed to have belonged to the war chief El Hadj Oumar Tall, was also returned to Senegal in 2019 but doubts remain as to the identity of its owner, according to certain sources.
A dozen other requests have been officially made to him, “some, very general, for which the Minister of Culture, Rachida Dati, asked for a tightening of the field, as for Ethiopia which claimed a few years ago all the works contained in the national collections,” said the ministry.
Algeria demands for its part of the personal effects of the Emir Abdel Kader and Mali of the pieces of the Treasury of Ségou which had been seized during military operations linked to the colonial conquest. Benin also wants France to study other requests after the 26 objects already returned, he detailed.
Experts from the ministry are engaged in research work from.
Acquired during the colonial period often by force or coercion, but not always, a large part of the 72,000 African objects of the Quai Branly museum in Paris are also the subject of long -term work on their origin for possible restitutions.
A certain number of scientific work is also carried out at the Museum of Man, according to the ministry.
– “Repair” –
The framework bill concentrates “most of the expectations”, recently agreed Rachida Dati, who had been forced to withdraw a first text from the parliamentary agenda.
He was deemed insufficiently motivated by the Council of State and attacked by senators who denounced a “forced march exam”.
The new text pursues an objective of “reappropriation”, by the requesting states, “fundamental elements of their heritage”, as well as “material and symbolic reparation of the link which unites the states concerned with their heritage and their memory”, underlined the ministry.
This is the third and last stage of a legislative system aimed at facilitating the release of works in the public domain.
In 2023, France adopted two other framework laws: the first facilitates the restitution of goods robbed by the Nazis. The second concerns that of human remains. It found a first application with the return of three skulls in Madagascar, which should be formalized in late August.
Posted on July 30 at 5:25 p.m. AFP
