[CPProt.net] Italy, victim of numerous cultural property thefts, takes over 50 years to fulfill promise and return Axum Obelisk to Ethiopia

[Museum Security Network / Cultural Property Protection Net (Ton Cremers)]

Ethiopians celebrate return of 160-ton 'souvenir' from Italy 

ANDREW HEAVENS 
IN AXUM, NORTHERN ETHIOPIA 


ABEBE Alemyehu was 12 when he watched Benito Mussolini's soldiers storm into
the Ethiopian town of Axum to steal its ancient obelisk. 

Now the 81-year-old is preparing to go out on the streets near his family
compound once again, as a new generation of Italians bring the sacred
monument back. 

Later this month, Italy is due to return the first part of the 24m high
160-ton tower of granite, almost 70 years after its soldiers seized it
during fascist Italy's brief occupation of Ethiopia in the build-up to the
Second World War. 

The return will mark the end of a bitter feud between Italy and the
impoverished East African country, which has spent decades campaigning for
the repatriation of a national symbol. 

Ethiopian campaigners also plan to use the event to increase pressure on a
host of other European institutions, including the British Museum, National
Archives of Scotland and Edinburgh University Library, to hand back
plundered Ethiopian treasures in their collections. 

"The Ethiopian people have waited so long for the return," Teshome Toga,
Ethiopia's minister of youth, culture and sport said. "There has been a very
continuous and sustained struggle to get back our heritage. At last it seems
we have a light at the end of the tunnel." 

Thousands of Ethiopian priests and dignitaries are expected to pour into the
northern Ethiopian town to welcome the monument, thought to have been
erected as an imperial grave marker as far back as the 3rd century AD. 

Meles Zenawi, Ethiopia's prime minister, and Girma Wolde Giorgis, its
president, will be among the guests of honour on the return of the obelisk -
as will Abebe Alemyehu, one of only a small handful of people who can still
bare witness to the original theft. 

Abebe remembers watching as a gang of Italian soldiers started hauling the
intricately-carved obelisk along the streets of the dusty town, once the
capital of the mighty pre-Christian Axumite Empire. 

"We used to come and play around the Italians every morning because there
was no school. They were quite open to us. But they kept the adults back,
sometimes with whips," said the retired government official, who still lives
a 10-minute walk away from the obelisk's original home on the edge of the
town. 

He can still remember the silent despair of his parents and friends. "They
were covering their faces so the Italians couldn't see them crying," he
said. 

"I saw it when it departed from Axum, and, if God permits, I will see it
when it comes back. I am very, very happy." 

The obelisk was seized as a war trophy on the orders of Mussolini in 1937.
Soldiers dragged it out of Axum and transported it to Rome via ship and
train. They then erected it at the centre of a busy road junction in the
Piazza di Porta Capena, not far from the Coliseum, to act as a symbol of
fascist Italy's new empire in Africa. Those dreams died after Italy's defeat
in the Second World War. 

But Rome held on to the monument, despite promising to dismantle and return
it in international treaties signed in 1947 and 1997. The Italian government
finally agreed to take down the obelisk in October 2003 after a concerted
campaign of petitions, letters and banner-waving protests led by politicians
and academics. 

Richard Pankhurst, son of the suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst and a history
professor at Addis Ababa University, said that Italy's decision should
encourage other holders of Ethiopian loot to follow suit. 

"I think you can't return a piece of stone weighing more than 100 tons
without it having implications. 

"I think it will have implications for the return of Ethiopian loot taken by
the British as well as by the Italians. But also for the return of loot
taken by colonial powers from other parts of the world." 

A number of Ethiopian manuscripts and other treasures currently on display
in institutions like National Archives of Scotland and Edinburgh University
Library were originally taken from Ethiopia during the British invasion of
the country in 1868.

http://news.scotsman.com/