Looted and returned: Four sacred Thai Buddha sculptures finally home

The United States handed over four ancient statues of the Lord Buddha and his incarnations to Thailand today, which were smuggled out of the country more than six decades ago and later exhibited in the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco.

Culture Minister Sabida Thaiseth said at the handover ceremony that the return of the bronze statues from the Prakhon Chai group is extremely significant, due to their immeasurable historical and archaeological value.

These artefacts serve as key evidence of the prosperity of ancient communities in northeastern Thailand, she said.

They include three Bodhisattva statues and one Buddha statue and are part of the Prakhon Chai collection. They were looted from the Khao Plai Bud Prasat ruins in Chalerm Phra Kiat district (formerly Prakhon Chai district) of Buri Ram province and sold to British art dealer Douglas Latchford, who smuggled them to the United States.

A Thai committee, tasked with securing the return of antiquities, has been seeking assistance from US Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) since 2018.

After studying documents sent from Thailand, the museum acknowledged that the statues had been smuggled out of the country. Under the museum’s procedures, however, the artefacts could only be returned with approval from the museum’s committee.

The return process involved the committee proposing the removal of the artefacts from the museum’s inventory, seeking opinions from all stakeholders over a six-month period and, finally, consenting to return the artefacts to their rightful owner(s).

Sabida said the successful recovery of the bronze artefacts resulted from close cooperation between the Committee for the Recovery of Thai Antiquities Abroad, the Fine Arts Department, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and US Homeland Security Investigations.

She also revealed that 29 more antiquities will be repatriated to Thailand, 25 from the United States and four from Europe.

Last year, Thailand was informed, by the US Department of Homeland Security, that the museum’s committee had agreed on April 22nd to remove the four artefacts from its collection and return them to Thailand.

The minister thanked the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco for its cooperation and expressed hope that this success would lead to the recovery of more Thai antiquities in the future.

The Fine Arts Department will display all four returned artefacts at the National Museum from January 7.

Deputy Chief of Mission at the US Embassy in Bangkok, Elizabeth Konick, said that, since 2007, the United States has facilitated the return of more than 20,000 artefacts to over 40 countries worldwide, including 250 to Southeast Asia and Thailand.

She added that bilateral cooperation will continue, particularly in combating transnational crimes such as drug and human trafficking.