China wants “severe punishment” for the Philadelphia man fingered for stealing a thumb off an ancient terracotta statue.
Michael Rohana was charged with stealing a thumb from the 2,000-year-old warrior statue last December during an ugly sweater party at the Franklin Institute.
He broke the thumb off the $4.5 million statue during the party after taking a selfie with the artifact, court documents allege.
Rohana was keeping the thumb in a desk drawer.
“We ask that the U.S. severely punish the perpetrator,” Wu Haiyun, a Chinese cultural official, told state-run TV, according to the BBC. “We have lodged a serious protest with them.”
Wu runs the Shaanxi Cultural Heritage Promotion Centre, which loaned 10 statues to the Franklin Institute for the “Terracotta Warriors of the First Emperor” exhibit.
He accused the Philadelphia museum of being “careless,” and “strongly condemned” officials for letting the statue be defiled, the BBC reported.
Rohana reportedly wandered away from the party to the warriors, which were in a closed but unlocked section of the museum.
Wu added to China’s CCTV that a pair of experts were headed to the City of Brotherly Love to examine the statue — and hopefully restore the thumb.
The 10 statues on loan are part of 8,000 built to protect Emperor Qin Shi Huang when he died in 210 B.C.
China loaned the life-sized figures — which farmers discovered in the mid-1970s — to the museum for an exhibit running from late September until March 4.
But Wu indicated his center would seek financial retribution, the BBC noted.
Court documents filed against Rohana last week claim the terracotta appendage itself is worth $5,000.
