French MPs to vote on returning stolen artefacts to Benin, Senegal

PARIS: French lawmakers are to vote on Tuesday on returning prized artefacts to Benin and Senegal more than a century after they were looted by colonial forces and hauled back to Paris to be displayed in museums.

The pieces include a royal throne and statues taken by the French army during a war in Benin -- then the wealthy African kingdom of Dahomey -- as well a sabre once wielded by a 19th-century Muslim sheik in what is today Senegal.

"It is not an act of repentance or reparation, nor a condemnation of the French cultural model," Culture Minister Roselyne Bachelot insisted ahead of the vote in the National Assembly, the lower house of parliament.

Instead, returning the artefacts should open "a new chapter of cultural ties between France and Africa," she said. If approved, France would officially restore to Benin 26 items from the so-called Treasure of Behanzin, looted during the 1892 pillaging of the palace of Abomey in Dahomey.