Fujian high court orders return of stolen Buddha statue from Netherlands

The Fujian Provincial High People's Court upheld a ruling from a lower court on Tuesday morning, ordering a Dutch collector in possession of the Zhang Gong Patriarch — an ancient Buddha statue containing the mummified remains of a famous monk — to return the stolen relic to its owners, two villages in Fujian.

The statue is a significant cultural relic that had been enshrined at the Puzhao Temple in Fujian's Sanming city for local villagers so they could pay tribute and worship it before it was stolen in December 1995, according to the high court.

In the original verdict made in late 2020, the Sanming Intermediate People's Court had demanded Oscar Van Overeem, a Dutch architect and collector who has the statue, to return it to Yangchun and Dongpu villages.

Van Overeem appealed the ruling to the high court.

After further investigation and trial, the high court said on Tuesday that Van Overeem claimed to have bought the statue in Amsterdam in 1996, but he could not provide a relevant receipt.

In March 2015, Van Overeem allowed the statue to be exhibited at the Hungarian Natural History Museum in Budapest, the high court said.

It identified the statue as a stolen, illegally exported cultural relic, noting that it reflects the traditional customs of southern Fujian and holds special meaning for the villagers.

Therefore, the statue should be returned, the court added.

Lawyers from both sides were present when the ruling was announced on Tuesday. A number of legislators, political advisers and journalists were also on hand for the ruling.

The villagers had been looking for the statue ever since its disappearance. The mystery was solved after it drew international attention from its exhibition in Hungary, when an X-ray revealed the statue contained the mummified remains of a Buddhist monk.

The National Cultural Heritage Administration of China said at that time that they would communicate with Van Overeem in the hopes of persuading him to return the statue to China, and villagers also tried to negotiate a deal with him.

But all efforts to reach an agreement failed, leading the villagers to initiate a lawsuit for the return of the statue to the Sanming court. After filing the case in November 2015, the court held two public hearings in 2018.

The millennium-old Buddha statue is of Zhanggongzushi, or Zhang Gong Patriarch, a Fujian monk widely known for helping people battle diseases while preaching the Buddhist spirit and doctrines during the Song Dynasty (960-1279).

When he died at age 37, his body was mummified and encased in the statue.