12:53 | Lima, Jul. 04 (ANDINA).
The Peruvian government said Monday it will take legal action against the Gothenburg City Council to secure the return of a hundred 2000-year-old textiles from the Paracas culture.
President Alan Garcia made the announcement in his opening speech at the Second Conference on International Cooperation for the Protection and Repatriation of Cultural Heritage in Lima, the capital of Peru.
"I have ordered to initiate proceedings against the Gothenburg City Council in Sweden because it is complicit in the theft of more than 100 textiles of the Paracas culture," he said at the ceremony, attended by Egypt's Minister of State for Antiquities, Zahi Hawass.
Garcia said "it isn't right that this city council in Sweden -land of peace, understanding and consultation- misappropriates these 100 mantles that were stolen from Peru."
"If so, they are complicit in a theft and we have the right to sue them in Peru and use the assistance of the International Police (Interpol) to arrest those who plunder and loot a country and a civilization," he added.
Large quantities of embroidered textiles were smuggled out of Peru and illegally exported to museums and private collections all over the world around 1930. About a hundred of them were smuggled to Sweden and ended up at the Gothenburg
Ethnographic Museum, which is now the Museum of World Culture.
(END) FPQ/LGV/EEP/LVT
Published: 7/4/2011