Messages of support for the return of the Aksum obelisk, looted on Mussolini's personal orders in 1937, and still not repatriated from Rome, continue to be issued by American and other scholars.
The Anthropology Department of the University of Massachusetts at Boston has thus passed a unanimous resolution declaring:
"Whereas the giant obelisk at Aksum, Ethiopia, was looted from that country, in 1937, after its conquest by Fascist Italian aggressors, and whereas that monument central to the civilization of Ethiopia has not yet been returned by the government of Italy to its rightful owner, the people of Ethiopia, we urge the present government of Italy, finally, at this overly late date, to return the obelisk with care to the site at Aksum from which this monument was originally stolen, fully restored at said site, and at no cost to Ethiopia".
In a further statement the American social anthropologist Professor Fred Gamst, who carried out his research among the Qemant people of north-western Ethiopia, declares:
"The grand monument of Aksum is a magisterial manifestation of the architecture and art of the cultural heritage of the citizens of Ethiopia. The present Italian government, successor to that of the Fascists defeated by the United Nations in 1943, should speedily restore this looted monument to its original Aksumite location, and at no cost to the government and people of Ethiopia. Such a return of its war loot by a post-Fascist government of Italy is now more than a half century overdue. I am sure that the current government of Italy will desire to do the right thing as a member of the family of nations - immediately restore the Obelisk to Aksum".
Support for the obelisk's return is also being voiced by a number of Italo-American academics, notably by Dr Pascal Imperato, Distinguished Service Professor and Chairman of the University of New York's Department of Preventive Health and Community Health. He writes that he is "distressed", as an Italo-American, "that this obelisk has not been repatriated, and that it is being damaged through air pollution exposure. Another Italo-American, Dr Nicolo DeMarco, an educationalist in New York, has also urged the obelisk's speedy repatriation.