British Museum mutes social media over moai statue campaign

The British Museum deactivated the responses on a social media post after being flooded with comments from Chileans demanding that the institution return two moai statues from Easter Island.

Comments of "return the moai" began to inundate the museum's social channels after Chilean social media influencer Mike Milfort, who has 7.5m followers on TikTok, encouraged his fans to spam the museum’s Instagram page.

The statues, which date from between 1400 and 1650 AD, were taken from the Chilean territory of Rapa Nui. They were given as gifts to Queen Victoria in 1869 by Commodore Richard Powell before being endowed to the British Museum.

The British Museum said it only deactivated comments on one post, shared in collaboration with a youth charity, as it welcomed debate but felt it had to be "balanced against the need for safeguarding considerations, especially where young people are concerned".

The museum added that it has "good and open relations" with colleagues in Rapa Nui, and there have been several visits from the community to London since 2018.

The moai campaign is the latest repatriation debate to hit the British Museum. In December, Greek Culture Minister Lina Mendoni said Greece would not recognise the British Museum’s ownership of the Parthenon marbles, stating they “were stolen by [Lord] Elgin, abused, vandalised and sawed up to be in England”.

Medoni also said Greece “cannot accept either ownership, or possession, or jurisdiction [over the marbles] from the British Museum”.

Last week, the government confirmed that a law that would have allowed the restitution of artefacts on moral grounds would not apply to national museums and galleries.