The letter, addressed to the Prime Minister of Netherlands, reads, “The Buddha is our God and we have had faith in him for hundreds of centuries. He is an important part of our life, and we hope that it will be returned soon.”
Doctors in the Netherlands were amazed, when in February 2015, they found that the statue actually contained a mummified monk within. The statue dates back nearly one thousand years. The researchers also found that the organs of the body had been removed, and replaced with Buddhist scrolls in Chinese. Some of the scrolls had however rotted away. According to villagers, the mummy contains the body of Zhanggong Zhushi, a 37-year-old monk. According to Buddhist beliefs, the monk is not dead, but meditating.
Villagers from Yangchun county, in the southeastern Fujian province, as well as overseas Chinese associations signed the petition to the Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, and hoped that the Dutch government would handover the statue to the Chinese embassy in the Netherlands.
The statue, usually housed in the Drents Museum in the city of Assen, Netherlands is currently owned by a Dutch private collector, but villagers believe that the statue was stolen from the village temple in 1995. The villagers saw photos of the statue pop up in social media sites, and they decided to act on their suspicion that this might the same statue.
The Dutch collector has promised to return the statue if the charges of theft can be proven. However, the collector claims that he has proof of possession before 1995. The collector also clarified that if returned, he would prefer that the statue go back to the village, rather than a museum in China.
The statue had been withdrawn from the exhibition in Budapest, and has been returned to Drents, awaiting a resolution.
