Auction of contested African artifacts going ahead in Paris

A Nigerian commission has called for cancellation of an auction Monday of sacred Nigerian statues in Paris, which it alleges were stolen.

Christie’s auction house has defended sale, saying artworks were legitimately acquired and sale will go ahe.

French courts have consistently ruled in favor of auction houses in recent years whose sales of sacred objects, such as Hopi tribal masks, were contested by rights groups and representatives of tribes.

A Princeton scholar, professor Chika Okeke-Agulu, alongside Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments, raised alarm earlier this month that objects were looted during Biafran war in late 1960′s.

Christie’s wrote earlier this month to Nigerian commission, saying sale would go ahe.

Okeke-Agulu, who is a member of Igbo tribe, said objects were taken through “an act of violence” from his home state of Anambra and that y should t be sold. An online petition with over 2,000 signatures is demanding that auction be halted.

petition said “as world awakens to reality of systemic racial injustice and inequality, thanks to #BlackLivesMatter movement, we must t forget that it is t just black body, but also black culture, identity and especially art that is being misappropriated.”

It claims that between 1967 and 1970, as Nigeria's Biafran civil war rd and while more than 3 million civilians were dying, a rewned European treasure hunter was in Biafra "on a hunting spree for our cultural herit.”

Christie’s could t be immediately reached for comment Monday.