Chinese villagers want their mummy

Chinese villagers embroiled in a fight over the ownership of a 1,000-year-old mummified monk made a passionate plea Wednesday for their idol to be returned as the case wrapped up in a Dutch court.

The small eastern Chinese village of Yangchun has accused Dutch collector Oscar van Overeem of buying the stolen Buddha statue containing the remains of the monk in Hong Kong in 1996.

“We grew up with the statue. He was there day and night. He is our spiritual leader,” Yangchun village spokesman Lin Wen Qing said shortly after lawyers closed their arguments at the Amsterdam District Court.

“For us, it is the most important thing to have him back,” said Lin, 42, speaking through an interpreter. He was one of six villagers who travelled from Yangchun to attend the hearing in the Dutch capital.

The village is asking Dutch judges to rule that the human-sized Buddha statue be returned to the temple from where it was stolen in late 1995, after being worshipped there for centuries.

Missing for two decades the statue, called the “Zhanggong Patriarch” resurfaced when villagers in 2015 recognised it as part of a display at the “Mummy World Exhibition” at Budapest’s Natural History Museum.

A scan of the statue revealed a skeleton inside – said to be that of a Chinese monk who lived nearly a millenium ago during China’s Song dynasty.

The statue was subsequently withdrawn from the exhibition.

The villagers are demanding that the statue be given back in a closely-watched case which could mark one of the first successful retrievals of Chinese relics in court.

They said they were convinced that the statue which Van Overeem bought was their missing idol.

“There is a very special bond between the villagers and the statue,” their lawyer Jan Holthuis told the judges.

But Van Overeem again reiterated in court that he did not have the statue, which he said he exchanged in a swap with a Chinese collector in 2015.

“I swapped the statue in a transaction. I was happy to hear that it would go back to China,” Van Overeem told the judges, adding he did not know the identity of the collector with whom he did the swap.

He also furiously refuted Holthuis’ claims that he was in fact a dealer in Chinese art, and bought the statue in Hong Kong in 1996 — a known destination for stolen artifacts.

“I’m an architect and a passionate collector. But I’m not a dealer,” an angry Van Overeem said. He said he did not know where the statue was.

But Holthuis disagreed.

He accused Van Overeem and the statue’s new owner of “conspiring to make the Buddha mummy disappear to make sure that the claimants cannot take action.”

Judges in the case are due to hand down a ruling on December 12.

Previous retrievals of Chinese artifacts have been done through diplomatic channels.

Beijing in recent years has vehemently protested the sale of artifacts that it said were stolen, particularly in the 19th century when European powers began encroaching on Chinese territory.

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