|
 | Monday, May 01, 2000, updated at 10:19(GMT+8) | ||||||||||||
|
Life | ||||||||||||
|
China Urges Auction Houses to Stop Selling Looted TreasuresThe State Administration of Cultural Relics urged two Hong Kong auction houses on Saturday to stop the sale of treasures looted from the Yuanmingyuan, an imperial garden of China's Qing Dynasty, by British and French troops in the second Opium War in 1860.The bureau said that the auctions of Chinese antiques in Christie's and Sotheby's on Sunday and Tuesday in Hong Kong will hurt the feelings of people. "It shows no respect to Chinese laws or international treaties,'' the bureau said. Some antiques of such kind were already auctioned off yesterday afternoon, sources said. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) said in 1995 that any cultural relics looted or lost in wars should be returned to home, no matter when the war took place or the request was made to return the relics. The bureau said that the principle has been agreed upon by the world and UNESCO will discuss the issue of putting it into treaties in May. In addition, China has claimed its right of ordering the return of looted or lost antiques back to 1996 when signing an international treaty on the return of cultural relics. The auctions by Christie's and Sotheby's should be stopped because it is in defiance of the principle, the bureau said. However, according to yesterday's Beijing Evening News, Christie's planned to auction off some antiques from Yuanmingyuan yesterday afternoon. The items in the two houses' catalogs included a hexagonal ceramic vase commissioned by the Qing Dynasty Emperor Qianlong in 1743 and three bronze sculptures stolen from a water clock that included the heads of the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac. "We wish that all the cultural relics lost in the wars could be returned to their motherland,'' said the bureau. China is one of the few countries that has signed all the international treaties on the protection of cultural relics. (China Daily)
 In This Section 
| ||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Copyright by People's Daily Online, all right reserved | | Mirror in U.S. | Mirror in Japan | Mirror in Edu-Net | Mirror in Tech-Net | |
