Arrested on June 12 at the Musée du quai Branly, five defendants were tried on Wednesday September 30 before the Paris Criminal Court for "attempted theft in assembly of a classified movable object" and risk up to ten years imprisonment and 150,000 euros fine.

These five activists, who had tried to seize a funeral post, by their gesture wanted to denounce the "looting of Africa".

They intend to make their trial a platform to defend the restitution of works taken during colonization.

Their leader, the Congolese activist Emery Mwazulu Diyabanza, has also continued his brilliance.

On July 30, he was arrested in Marseille after having seized, alone, an ivory object at the Museum of African, Oceanic and Amerindian arts.

On September 10, with three acolytes, he this time attempted to take a sculpture from the Congo to the Afrika Museum in Berg en Dal, the Netherlands, where he was arrested and then released after eight hours in police custody.

"We bring them home"

"We had to approach the trial (in Paris) with a fighting spirit, even if it is risky," explains Emery Mwazulu Diyabanza.

"We had no intention of stealing this work, but we will continue, until the injustice of the plundering of Africa is repaired."

Each time, the 41-year-old Pan-African activist films and then posts online a video of his actions.

A "direct diplomacy" whose objective is to stir up social networks as much as possible.

On the one at Quai Branly, we see him unseal a 19th century Sara funeral post and carry it down the halls.

He then yells: "We bring them home".

Activist Emery Mwazulu Diyabanza was born in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and, by his own words, makes a living from selling electronic items online.

He divides his time between Champigny-sur-Marne, in the Parisian suburbs, and Lomé in Togo.

Wearing a black beret in tribute to American activists the Black Panthers, the map of Africa as a pendant, the activist claims to have been put "in the dungeon" after the 2011 presidential election in the DRC, where he would have been close to death.

With the Unity, Dignity and Courage (UDC) movement that he founded in 2014, he campaigns for the restitution of works, against the CFA franc, or even "ill-gotten gains".

He claims "more than 700,000 members" scattered across Europe and Africa, but his Facebook account has just under 30,000 subscribers.

A complaint against the French state

In addition to his assaults, he lodged a complaint on June 30 for "theft and concealment" against the French state, which had "strongly condemned" these acts through the voice of its then Minister of Culture, Frank Riester.

The Quai Branly Museum, which has a very large collection of early African arts, has become a civil party, said its president Emmanuel Kasarhérou.

"The issue of renditions" deserves "a serious debate" which "does not adapt well to media blows," he said.

The museum is committed "to documenting the provenance and origin of its collections", added Emmanuel Kasarhérou, "on the basis of this work, we will be able to move forward".

Restitution projects

Under the leadership of Emmanuel Macron, France has committed to definitively return in the coming months a historic saber in Senegal and 26 objects looted by French colonial troops in 1892 in Benin. 

These decisions follow the report of two academics, commissioned by the executive in 2018, which listed some 90,000 African works in French museums and laid the groundwork for a restitution.

Rather, he advocated the "circulation" of works, which have not always been looted or stolen, but has rekindled a controversial debate.

"Macron recognizes the looting but it is he who decides the quantity of works returned and whether there should be transfer of property or not, it is an insult to us", protests Emery Mwazulu Diyabanza. 

"Apart from entertaining the gallery, what is the point of this kind of action? What will they do with these works if they take them?", Responded the director of the Museums program at the Beninese National Agency for the Promotion of Heritage and of Tourism Development (ANPT), Alain Godonou.

"Discussions between France and Benin are progressing very well", adds this former head of Unesco.

"We are in the process of putting everything in place to accommodate these works, several museums are being rehabilitated, and that is what counts if we want to be credible."

With AFP

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