Germany has returned two wooden masks of the indigenous Kogi community to Colombia but conceded that wearing the sacred artefacts in ceremonies may come with a health risk because they were treated with toxic pesticides during their time in German museums.
The masks, which date back to the mid-15th century and have been held in ethnological collections in Berlin for over a century, were handed over to Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, by his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier at a ceremony in Berlin on Friday.
