9, November 2021
France formally returns looted Benin artworks at Élysée ceremony 0
French President Emmanuel Macron hosted his counterpart from Benin, President Patrice Talon, on Tuesday to formally seal an agreement to return 26 artworks taken from the former French colony’s Palace of Abomey – today a UNESCO World Heritage site.
The 26 pieces, from a trove of objects snatched by French forces in 1892, were exhibited at the Quai Branly museum in Paris in the run-up to Tuesday’s ceremony. They will be shipped to the West African country in the coming days.
The decision to return them follows growing calls in Africa for European countries to return the colonial spoils from museums.
It is part of a drive by French President Emmanuel Macron to improve his country’s image in Africa, especially among young people.
The treasures are from the kingdom of Dahomey in the south of present-day Benin and include the throne of Dahomey’s last king, Behanzin, as well as three totemic statues, four palace doors, several portable altars and three warrior dance staffs.
The Élysée said Macron’s commitment for Africans to be able see their cultural wealth at home and not just in European museums “marks an important step in building a new relationship between France and Africa”.
Last month, Macron announced that a “talking drum” cherished by Ivory Coast’s Ebrie people, also at the Quai Branly, would be handed back as well.
Some museum directors have criticised the move to return works they deem of “universal” interest.
But Quai Branly president Emmanuel Kasarherou said he welcomed the “soul-searching” that those calls had triggered about the provenance of artworks.
‘Ripped from their cultures’
The Quai Branly, which has a vast trove of African artefacts, has begun a sweeping review of its collection of 300,000 objects.
The aim is “to identify works believed to have been taken through violence, without the owners’ consent, or as war booty or through the coercion of the colonial administration”, Kasarherou told AFP.
“Not all objects that are in European collections have been stolen,” he emphasised, but “what proportion were? Our objective is to find out.”
Since his election in 2017, Macron has gone further than his predecessors in admitting to past French abuses in Africa.
In a speech to students in Burkina Faso soon after taking office, he vowed to facilitate the return of African cultural heritage within five years.
An expert report commissioned by Macron counted some 90,000 African works in French museums, 70,000 of them at the Quai Branly alone.
The restitution calls culminated last year in a vote in the French parliament, where lawmakers overwhelmingly backed returning a group of artefacts to Benin and Senegal, another former French colony.
Macron has predicted that the 26 objects taken from the Abomey palace will be “the pride of Benin” when they are returned.
They will be exhibited at various sites in Benin, including a former Portuguese fort in the city of Ouidah, once a slave-trading hub, while awaiting the completion of a museum in Abomey to house them.
Benin’s Talon has previously said he was “not satisfied” with the “small steps” taken by France and called on Macron to go further.
Source: AFP
23, November 2021
At least 45 people killed in bus blaze in Bulgaria 0
At least 45 people, including a dozen minors, were killed after a bus caught fire south of the Bulgarian capital early Tuesday morning, officials said.
A cause has yet to be determined but officials believe a fire broke out on board and the bus crashed into guardrails.
There were no other vehicles involved in the accident, which occurred around 2:00 am (2400 GMT) on a highway about 40 kilometres (26 miles) from Sofia, near the village of Bosnek.
“Of the victims … 12 in total were under the age of 18,” national police chief Stanimir Stanev said.
He told bTV television that 45 of the 52 people on the bus were killed.
Nikolay Nikolov, head of the Fire Safety and Civil Protection department at the interior ministry, told public broadcaster BNT that “seven passengers survived”.
They were taken to a hospital in the capital with serious burns, he added.
According to bTV, the bus was travelling from Turkey’s main city of Istanbul to Skopje in North Macedonia.
North Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev said the victims were probably fellow Macedonians.
“We don’t know if all the victims are from North Macedonia, but we assume so because the bus is registered in the country,” he said in an interview with Nova TV.
But police chief Stanev said while the two drivers of the bus were Macedonian, the passengers were Albanian.
“Initial information shows that 52 people were travelling in the bus, including two drivers with Macedonian nationality and 50 passengers with Albanian nationality,” he said.
Bulgaria’s interim Prime Minister Stefan Yanev and Interior Minister Boyko Rashkov rushed to the site of the crash Tuesday morning, while local media said that the North Macedonian and Albanian premiers were also on their way.
“It’s a terrifying picture in there. I haven’t seen anything like that before,” Rashkov told journalists at the site.
“Nobody can say for certain how many are there and who they were. The bodies are badly burned and have to be identified one by one,” he added.
Bulgaria has a history of deadly bus accidents. Seventeen Bulgarian tourists died in 2018 when their bus skidded on a wet road and overturned.
A total of 628 people died in road accidents in 2019 and 463 in 2020 in the country of 6.9 million people, according to official data. The accidents were often attributed to poor road conditions, outdated cars and speeding.
Source: AFP