Send the Bill to Paris!

The Beninese kataklè stool ended up in the National Museum of Finland in 1939, when it and the Musée de l’Homme in Paris exchanged items with each other. The object had made its way to France after French Colonel Dodds looted the wooden stool from the palace of the king of the Kingdom of Dahomey—located in what is now Benin—in 1892.

A kataklè is a three-legged stool used by Dahomean chiefs as a seat, or by the king as a footrest. It holds significant emotional value for the people of Benin, which is why they had requested its return from Finland.

And that is what happened: on Tuesday, Finland’s Minister of Science and Culture, Mari-Leena Talvitie, returned the kataklè stool to the state of Benin. The trip cost a total of €14,800.40, which included travel expenses, visas, and daily allowances for the minister, a special advisor, a security officer, and one official. This figure does not include their salaries, which, with ancillary costs, amount to several thousand euros more.

As a Finnish taxpayer—entirely innocent of the theft of the kataklè stool, as were also my ancestors—I found myself wondering: doesn't this essentially mean that Finns are now paying a considerable sum because of a French colonel’s crime? Wouldn’t it be only fair for the Finnish government to send an invoice to the French, and for them to gladly settle it with hard cash?

Previous thoughts on the same topic:
An African and an Iranian Immigrant Educated a Woke-Blinded Deputy Mayor
A Finnish Deputy Mayor Wanted to Ban an Old Board Game from Children
Will the multinational force led by Kenyans help?

University of Helsinki gained an anti-Semitic reputation

The University of Helsinki garnered international attention when it decided to bar Israelis from participating in student exchange programs. This was simply interpreted as anti-Semitism, which, of course, it was.

Now, Finland's largest and most scientifically prestigious university is attempting to remedy what can be remedied, which includes the university leadership requesting people who have been demonstrating in support of Hamas in the university premises for over a month to leave. Apparently, the university administration believes this will not happen voluntarily, as they had already requested assistance from the police when making the request.

It remains to be seen how the university leadership will react if the demonstrators do not leave. Or if they start resisting the dispersal of the demonstration with outright violence.

Previous thoughts on the same topic:
A caliphate was demanded in Germany
Demonstrations cause trouble in Helsinki and Sweden
International Master´s degree is an opportunity to be used