The Netherlands Returns 288 Stolen Artifacts to Indonesia

                On September 20, 2024, in a ceremony at the Museum Volkenkunde, the Dutch government returned 288 artifacts to Indonesia. This was the second time the Netherlands had returned stolen artifacts to the countries it colonized since 2020 and is in response to a report the Colonial Collections Committee issued imploring the government to comply with requests for the repatriation of artifacts from former colonies.[1] The newly returned artifacts include Hindu-Buddhist sculptures, a likeness of the god Ganesha that was shipped to the Netherlands in 1843, and sculptures depicting the gods Bhairava, Nandi, and Brahma that were taken from a 13^th-century temple in East Java during the 1800s.[2] According to Eppo Bruins, the Minister of Education, Culture, and Science of Netherlands, “These objects should never have been here [the Netherlands] … There was looting and pillaging going on in the colonial period and other types of involuntary loss of cultural objects. It is a matter of material justice to return them.”[3]