Priceless cultural heritage: Dancers performing during a ceremony held to unveil a collection of stolen Angkor artefacts at the Peace Palace in Phnom Penh. — AFP
Leader Hun Sen unveiled a collection of stolen Angkor crown jewellery which was recently returned to the kingdom after decades in Britain, pleading for other lost treasures to be handed back.
Gold crowns, necklaces and amulets were among the trove of treasures from the Angkor period, which ran from the ninth to 14th centuries AD when the Khmer empire dominated vast parts of South-East Asia.
The Cambodian culture ministry characterised the items – expected to go on display at the national museum – as “priceless cultural heritage”.
“I appeal to museums, institutions and Khmer artefact collectors to continue to return those items voluntarily to Cambodia,” Hun Sen told the ceremony.
“Heritage items should be returned to their country of origin.”
The culture ministry last month discreetly received 77 pieces from the family of the late, disgraced British art dealer Douglas Latchford.
Two 10th-century sculptures recently returned by the United States were also displayed yesterday.
When he died in 2020, Latchford was awaiting trial in the United States for art trafficking, and the same year his family agreed to return the antiquities to Cambodia. — AFP
