A study conducted by the Al-Hudhud Center for Archaeological Studies has shown how Yemen’s artefacts are being stolen and sold in auctions in the US and other countries.
Al-Hudhud Center for Archaeological Studies released a report on the theft of Yemeni artefacts and their subsequent sale at international auctions on Thursday.
According to the study, the antiques were sold at five auctions in America, four in Britain, three in France, two under Israel’s apartheid regime, and one each in Germany and the Netherlands.
It claimed that 2,167 antiques were bought, sold, and displayed in the US, while 501 relics were smuggled into Israel and bought and sold there.
According to the research, the al-Hodhod centre was able to identify 2523 items that have already been sold and have a market worth of $12 million. Some of the items have a value of $800,000, such as a manuscript dating back to the fifteenth century AD.
In its study, the centre reaffirmed that preliminary data shows that 1,384 artefacts are currently distributed throughout 7 international museums.
A classified document earlier this month revealed that a senior official from the government of Yemen’s exiled former president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, is in close contact with criminal groups that steal artefacts and archaeological discoveries from historic sites all over the war-torn nation and sell them to antiquities traffickers.
Since the devastating war on Yemen that Saudi Arabia has been waging since 2015, Saudi and Emirati forces have increased the flow of antiquities into Western nations while starving and bombing Yemen’s population. A million cultural artefacts, including statues, coins, manuscripts, and inscriptions, worth millions of dollars, have reportedly been smuggled out of the country.
Millions of Yemenis have been uprooted by the Saudi war, which has killed hundreds of thousands of them. In addition to destroying Yemen’s infrastructure, the war has spread deadly diseases and famine throughout the Persian Gulf nation.
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