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Netherlands inks new deal to return Indonesian artifacts

The Netherlands has signed a new deal with Indonesia to return nearly 300 cultural objects this month, including several statues, with the newly repatriated artifacts slated for an exhibition to mark the National Museum's reopening in October, according to a museum official.

Nur Janti (The Jakarta Post)
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Sun, September 22, 2024

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Netherlands inks new deal to return Indonesian artifacts An employee shows a pair of ‘subeng’ (ear studs) from Bali’s Tabanan Kingdom on Sept. 20, 2024 at the Wereldmuseum Amsterdam in the Dutch capital. The Netherlands’ Education, Culture and Science Ministry has announced the country is returning 288 artifacts taken from Indonesia during the Dutch colonial era. (AFP/Jeroen Jumelet/ANP)

T

he Netherlands has agreed to repatriate nearly 300 Indonesian artifacts that were stolen and taken to Europe during the Dutch colonial era, which lasted from the early 17th to mid-20th century.

Education, Culture and Science Minister Eppo Bruins signed a new agreement to return 288 cultural objects to Indonesia during a meeting on Friday with Culture Director General Hilmar Farid of the Indonesian Education, Culture, Research and Technology Ministry at the Wereldmuseum Amsterdam in the Dutch capital.

Also present at the meeting were members of Indonesia’s artifact repatriation committee.

The decision comes following recommendations from the Dutch Colonial Collections Committee to repatriate Indonesian artifacts that “should never have been in the Netherlands,” according to the minister.

“In the colonial period, cultural objects were often looted or they changed hands involuntarily in some other way,” Bruins said in a statement on Friday. “The return of these objects is important with regard to material redress.”

Chaired by Surinamese lawyer and human rights activist Lilian Gonçalves-Ho Kang You, the Dutch committee has been working closely with its Indonesian counterpart formed in 2021 by education minister Nadiem Makarim, which is currently chaired by former Indonesian ambassador to the Netherlands I Gusti Agung Wesaka Puja.

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Among the 288 cultural objects to be repatriated are four sculptures of the Hindu-Buddhist deities Bhairava, Nandi, Ganesha and Brahma. Believed to originate from the 13th-century Singosari kingdom of eastern Java, they were taken to the Netherlands in the first half of the 19th century.

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