How absurd to "kidnap" cultural relics with human rights

In the next year, the great French litterateur Victor Hugo wrote: "Two robbers breaking into a museum, devastating, looting and burning, leaving laughing hand-in-hand with their bags full of treasures; one of the robbers is called France and the other Britain." He hoped that one day France would feel guilty and return what it had plundered from China.

In the echo of Hugo's just condemnation and in face of his broad humanitarian sentiment, it is kind of narrow-minded and funny for Berge to offer to trade with someone something that actually belongs to that person.

The Chinese government has always paid great attention to the recovery of its lost cultural relics. It is the international community's broad consensus and the basic, inalienable right of the relics' original homeland to protect their cultural heritage and promote the return of relics, a right making up an important part of human rights.

Berge's decision to put the stolen treasures up for auction has deeply hurt the Chinese people's cultural rights and national feelings. His linking human rights to the return of the bronzes is also an irony to the international cause of human rights issues, as it is an infringement upon "the Chinese people's cultural rights under the pretext of human rights," as Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu put it.