JUSTICE AND HUMAN RIGHTS!

Appealing for the Responsible Efforts and Proper Actions of

the Government and its Institutions of the Kingdom of the Netherlands

for the Return of the Stolen Mummified Buddha Statue

from the Netherlands to His Home and People in China

Budapest, April 13, 2015

The statue of Patriarch Zhanggong, with his intact mummified body, was stolen from his nearly 1,000 year home in Puzhao Temple in Yangchun Village, Datian County, Sanming City, Fujian Province, China, on Dec 15, 1995.

Patriarch Zhanggong, a highly-respected Buddhist monk master who lived in the 11th century, was born, served and passed away in the region of Yangchun. His body has been kept ever since in a gilded clay Buddha statue sculpted around him according to the tradition of local patriarch culture. It has experienced all the vicissitudes of history. The holy statue has been protected and worshipped devoutly by generation after generation until the very last day of his stay among the people.

After being missing for 20 years, Patriarch Zhanggong reappeared as a displayed item in a commercial exhibition at the Hungarian Natural History Museum in early March 2015. We were then informed that the statue was sold to a private collector in the Netherlands in 1996. The event generates broad concern in China and worldwide; all the kindhearted and good-natured people support us in our claim to get back the statue.

“The statue of Patriarch Zhanggong has been an integral part of our lives for almost a millennium. We believe that our statue should not be displayed in any museum, including Chinese ones. It absolutely makes no sense for a holy statue that was worshiped to be “traded into” a personal collection after the crime of theft. We look forward to the day, with all our hearts, when Patriarch Zhanggong could be enshrined again in Puzhao Temple so that we and our descendants could continue to worship and protect him for the rest of all our lives,” The villagers of Yangchun village wrote to the collector.

Buddhist belief and patriarch culture in the region have been well inherited and protected so far. Patriarch Zhanggong is the embodiment of the Buddha. His return directly reflects the tolerance and kindness valued by Buddhism, and it is exactly the value and conscience of universality of any civilized society. It is also a way to pay respect to history, belief, religion, civilization and human rights, instead of allowing such rights to be deprived by others.

Legally, Logically and morally, we have the right to retrieve the statue and return it to its original home -- the Puzhao temple in Yangchun Village. Moreover, according to basic morality, people's remains should be returned to their homeland as Chinese people all hope so after their death.

Today, we will also present a petition to the Representative Office of the European Commission in Hungary. As we wrote, the Holy Right (the mummified right hand) and Holy Crown of King Stephen I of Hungary, that country’s first king, carry feelings and hope of the 15 million Hungarian people. The statue preserving the whole body of Patriarch Zhanggong is also the most sacred halidom to his country’s people, and now the situation is affecting the heart of every one of the 1.5 billion Chinese people, no matter if they are in China or abroad. We believe we share the same feeling as when the Holy Right and Holy Crown were taken away from their homeland.

We have delivered one letter to Prime Minister Mark Rutte and two to the collector through the Drents Museum in Assen, which is the only means of contacting the collector. Unfortunately we haven’t received any response from the anonymous Dutch collector.

We believe the statue was obtained by the current collector unknowingly. But this statue falls under laws governing the return of stolen cultural relics. This means the fact of Chinese ownership cannot be changed, no matter what commercial deals were concluded, which were simply illegal. And we don’t believe the authorities of a state could be completely indifferent and powerless when faced with the call of eagerly awaiting people with irrefutable evidence of the facts.

We hereby strongly appeal to and place high hope on the Government and its institutions of the Kingdom of the Netherlands as the only authorities with judicial jurisdiction to take responsible efforts and proper actions leading to the final and uniquely fair resolution of the issue, based on legal property and humanistic concerns, that is, to return the stolen statue to his intrinsic home and worshipping people in China.

Liu Wenjian          Li Zhen

President           Secretary-general

Federation of Chinese Social Organizations in Hungary

in the name of Yangchun Village, China

Contact: Mr. Li Zhen, Budapest, Hungary, overseas private coordinator and liaison responsible for the retrieval of Patriarch Zhanggong Statue on behalf of Yangchun Village. Tel: +36 30 9216879, Email: chinatimes@chinatimes.hu