> items decaying due to not being cared for > items being actively destroyed because people don’t care about them (Elgin Marbles moment, if they hadn’t been stolen they would’ve been pulverised to make building materials and yet now Greece are crying for them back) > items being actively destroyed for political reasons
There are huge amounts of things in Western museums that were looted, stolen, or otherwise illegitimately acquired (Koh I Noor among other things), but equally a lot of stuff was a case of “eh we don’t want it so if you’re going to pay for it in cash we’ll snap your hand off” - if you took something valued by the people then yeah you should give it back, but if you saved something unwanted from getting destroyed then I think the moral high ground is with the museum when they get a request for it to be returned