In an action streamed live on Facebook, a group of activists took a Congolese funeral statue from a Dutch museum, saying they were recovering art looted during the colonial era.
Key points:
- Black rights activist Mwazulu Diyabanza said in a post on Facebook the statue had been looted from the Congo during colonial times
- In June, Congo-born Mr Diyabanza tried a similar stunt at the Quai Branly Museum in Paris
- The Facebook livestream ended with police handcuffing one of the activists on a road near the museum
The activists were quickly arrested and the statue returned undamaged.
The Afrika Museum said in a statement the statue was removed from the museum in Berg en Dal, near the eastern Dutch city of Nijmegen, on Thursday (local time).
Black rights activist Mwazulu Diyabanza said in a post on Facebook that the removal of the statue was "part of the recovery of our artworks that were ALL acquired by looting, robbery, violence" during colonial times.
The incident came amid continuing anger at symbols of colonialism and slavery in the United States and Europe after George Floyd's death while in police custody led to global protests against racial injustice.
The Netherlands stunt happened on the same day prosecutors in neighbouring Belgium said a tooth presumed to be from Congolese independence hero Patrice Lumumba would soon be handed back to his relatives after years of lobbying efforts.
In June, five protesters, including Congo-born Mr Diyabanza, were stopped before they could leave the Quai Branly Museum in Paris with a 19th-century African funeral pole and placed under investigation by French prosecutors.
The Dutch museum said to avoid a conflict that could have caused damage to the statue, its security officers did not prevent the activists from leaving the building with the artifact as they knew police were nearby.
The Facebook livestream ended with police handcuffing one of the activists on a road near the museum.
Mr Diyabanza did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment that was left on his phone on Friday.
The Afrika Museum is part of a group of Dutch museums that last year published a set of principles for handling claims on cultural objects in their collections.
A spokesperson for the museums could not immediately be reached for comment.
AP