Selling stolen goods is acceptable behaviour?

[chem1st]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22119146

 

A mask from a native American tribe in Arizona has fetched 160,000 euros (£135,000) at auction in Paris, more than three times the pre-sale estimate.

 

Friday's auction of 70 masks fetched some 930,000 euros after a legal challenge to stop the sale failed.

 

Lawyers for the Hopi tribe had asked for the auction to be cancelled on the grounds that the masks must have been stolen from the tribe.

 

It considers them sacred and blessed with divine spirits.

 

Auctioneers, however, say the masks had been bought and sold in the past and were legally acquired.

 

They said blocking the sale would have implications for the trade of indigenous art and could potentially force French museums to hand back collections they have bought.

 

'Criminal gesture'

The masks - mysterious looking faces fashioned from wood, leather, horse hair and feathers, and painted in a vivid array of colours - are spiritual artefacts thought to have been taken from a reservation in northern Arizona in the 1930s and 40s.

 

To Hopi Indians they are sacred - tools through which the living can communicate with the spirits of the dead.

 

The sale of sacred Indian artefacts has been outlawed in the United States since 1990 - but the law does not extend to sales overseas.

 

Protesters repeatedly disrupted Friday's auction. As the Mother Crow mask was sold, one protester shouted: "These are sacred things!"

 

One mask was bought by an association to give back to the Hopis, said the Drouot auction house.

 

This is a common occurrence.

 

Property/goods are stolen, and then they are traded.

 

In the past, things stolen have included human beings, and the land under their feet. We are told by the thieves, that they rightfully own stolen items.

 

Let's say there is a character, and for convenience he is called 'Dodgy Dave'. Dodgy Dave will get thee owt, be it a pack of razors, block of cheese, joint of meat, case of beer etc. etc.

 

Dave steals something and sells it to you. You then sell it on. Is what you have done acceptable?

 

Because it seems to me that the sale of stolen property is totally acceptable behaviour in this country. Everyday, land is traded. Land that was stolen. That to me seems wrong. But it is totally acceptable behaviour in the eyes of the law.

 

It wan't that long back, that people were traded in this country legally. There is still a black market in people, in particular foreign women of the lower classes. And let's not forget that slave owners got a lot of compensation for giving up their stolen property in the form of people.

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/britains-colonial-shame-slaveowners-given-huge-payouts-after-abolition-8508358.html

 

The true scale of Britain's involvement in the slave trade has been laid bare in documents revealing how the country's wealthiest families received the modern equivalent of billions of pounds in compensation after slavery was abolished.

 

The previously unseen records show exactly who received what in payouts from the Government when slave ownership was abolished by Britain – much to the potential embarrassment of their descendants. Dr Nick Draper from University College London, who has studied the compensation papers, says as many as one-fifth of wealthy Victorian Britons derived all or part of their fortunes from the slave economy.

 

As a result, there are now wealthy families all around the UK still indirectly enjoying the proceeds of slavery where it has been passed on to them. Dr Draper said: "There was a feeding frenzy around the compensation." A John Austin, for instance, owned 415 slaves, and got compensation of £20,511, a sum worth nearly £17m today. And there were many who received far more.

 

Slave owners, got a lot of compensation in this country, when they were no longer allowed to sell their stolen property, this property being other human beings.

 

Suppose I bought a block of Cheese from Dodgy Dave and the police nicked me for having 'stolen goods'. Surely I should be entitled to compensation, as trading stolen goods is acceptable behaviour? What do you think?

 

Perhaps we shouldn't be allowed to trade stolen goods at all? Especially those that were originally owned in common...