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| Thursday, 22 April 2004 |
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Smuggling of priceless artifacts aborted by Asanga Warnakulasuriya An attempt to smuggle priceless artifacts dating back to the 18th and 19th centuries, by a foreign consultant to the former Tertiary Education and Training Ministry was foiled yesterday when the Customs seized the container at the Colombo harbour. The Senior Superintendent of the Customs Bio-Diversity Protection Unit, Samantha Gunesekara yesterday told the Daily News that the container full of ancient artifacts belonged to Australian professor Leon Mclan, who had once worked as a consultant at the Tertiary Education Ministry. According to the Superintendent, the professor who had purchased the artifacts from a shop near the Colombo Museum had somehow obtained the Archaeological Department's approval to ship the artifacts on the basis that they had no archaeological value. The professor had left the country and had instructed the Shipping forwarding agency to transport the container to Australia. The container was lying at Colombo from November last year. However, when Customs contacted Dr. Pushparatnam, a Professor of Archaeology at Jaffna University, his studies had revealed that the clay and brass pots had been used in the 18th and 19th centuries by Sinhalese and Tamils in North East and Vanni. Some clay pots had writings in "Brahmi Akkshara" (Brahmi alphabet) which is said to have been used around 23,000 years ago, Gunesekara said. He also stressed that this kind of smuggling of artifacts on the basis that they had no archaeological value had been one of the major threats to protecting priceless archaeological treasures adding that the permit officer at the Department should take the blame for granting approval. The Customs had confiscated the container and are carrying out further investigations. |
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