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ept. 13, p1

Four precious gold artifacts from the ancient Mataram period have gone missing from the National Museum in Central Jakarta, with officials from the Education and Culture Ministry scrambling to find the items, including by calling international auction houses to join its investigation.

'€œWe discovered on Wednesday at 9:10 a.m. that four historical gold artifacts were missing,'€ the ministry'€™s director general for culture, Kacung Marijan, said in a press conference on Thursday.

Your comments:

Our resources (worth billions of dollars) were stolen when historical sites were converted into malls.

By comparison, the four missing items are not worth much. This country sees more value in the latest, must-have gadgets, not historic treasures.

Vince Krisnawan

I visited the said museum on several occasions and I was appalled at the lack of security. The guards are always chatting '€” there is never any one guard on each floor except the top floor and lights and CCTV never are in a working condition.

Children are allowed to run around and sit on stone statues and touch the miniature houses.

They should take lessons from the Taipeh museum, where really strict rules apply. This is their heritage and the personnel sit in their cubicles.

John

It is an obvious inside job. CCTV cameras just happened to not be working? I'€™ve been there and security is quite tight.

Why didn'€™t the alarm go off when the case was opened?

Johnny