Activist fined for dislodging African art from Paris museum

 A Congolese activist was fined 2,000 euros ($2,320) on Wednesday for trying to take a 19th-century African funeral pole from a Paris museum in a protest against colonial-era injustice that he streamed online.

A Paris court convicted Emery Mwazulu Diyabanza and two or activists of attempted ft, but sentence stopped far short of what y potentially faced for ir actions at Quai Branly Museum: 10 years in prison and 150,000 euros in fines.

Activists and defense lawyers viewed case as a trial about how former empires should atone for past crimes . Diyabanza’s museum action took place in June, amid global protests against racial injustice and colonial-era wrongs unleashed by George Floyd’s death in U.S. Floyd, a Black man in handcuffs, died May 25 after a white police officer pressed his knee against Floyd’s neck for several minutes while Floyd said he couldn’t brea.

In Quai Branly protest, Diyabanza and or activists dislodged funeral pole from its perch while he gave a livestreamed speech about plundered African art. Guards quickly stopped m. activists argue that y never planned to steal work, but just wanted to call attention to its origins.

presiding judge insisted trial should focus on specific funeral pole incident and that his court wasn’t competent to judge France’s colonial era.

French officials denounced Quai Branly incident, saying it threatens ongoing negotiations with African countries launched by French President Emmanuel Macron in 2018 for legal, organized restitution efforts .

Diyabanza was unrepentant and pledged to appeal conviction by what he called “ judges of a government that fails in its moral duties."

“We get our legitimacy from perpetual idea of trying to recover our heritage and giving our people access to it,” he told reporters.

Diyabanza. has staged similar actions in Nerlands and sourn French city of Marseille . He accuses European museums of making millions on artworks taken from now-impoverished countries like his native Congo, and said funeral pole, which came from current-day Ch, should be among works returned to Africa.