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Thursday 3 July 2014

New research shows military and organised crime plundering Cambodia's cultural heritage

By Robert Carmichael

Radio Australia
New research on Cambodia has shown the country's rich cultural heritage has been repeatedly plundered by military and organised crime.
Thirty-five years of looting has taken its toll, with thousands of statues and other artefacts shipped across the border to Thailand, before disappearing into museums and private collections around the world.
But occasionally, there is good news.
In the past year, five life-sized statues have been returned to Cambodia.
Experts have been restoring the statues to go on display at the National Museum of Cambodia later this year.
Three of the 1,000-year-old statues came back from the United States just a few weeks ago while the other two were returned last year.
Museum director Kong Vireak says it's a big job restoring the statues.
"We have three conservation workshops," he told Asia Pacific.
"We have a stone conservation workshop, we have a metal conservation workshop, and a ceramic conservation workshop.
"For the stone conservation workshop we have five staff… (they) are very skilled."

University of Glasgow study

For 1,000 years, these five statues stood undisturbed in their 10th century temple in north-western Cambodia, a time when the country was the region's dominant political and military power.
But in the early 1970s, as the civil war raged between the US-backed government in Phnom Penh and Pol Pot's communist Khmer Rouge movement, the statues were hacked from their pedestals and taken across the border to Thailand.
Those years marked the start of decades of rampant theft of Cambodian antiquities.
No one knows how many items have been looted since then.
American lawyer and archaeologist Tess Davis says the number is certainly in the thousands, and likely far higher.
Ms Davis is one of a group of scholars and researchers who conducted a University of Glasgow study that tracked the plundering of Cambodia's temples between 1970 and 2005.

Speaking to looters, middlemen and others, the researchers revealed the links in the chain between the looted sites and the Bangkok-based dealer who laundered the pieces and sold them on to private collectors and museums around the world.
Ms Davis says the study undid the assumption that the looting was the small-scale work of local villagers.
Instead, they found it was well planned, and often involved the armed forces and organised crime.
"The organised looting and trafficking of Cambodian antiquities was tied very closely to the Cambodian civil war and to organised crime in the country," Ms Davis said.
"It began with the war, but it long outlived it, and was actually a very complicated operation, a very organised operation, that brought antiquities directly from looted sites here in the country to the very top collectors, museums and auction houses in the world."

Protection a tough job

Heng Sophady is the deputy director-general of the cultural heritage department at Cambodia's ministry of culture.
It's his job to protect the country's 4,000 archaeological and historical sites - a near-impossible task.
"(It's) not the duty of one ministry, it's not the duty of one nation, it's not the duty of one group - but it's the duty for all people, for everybody," Mr Sophady said.
He says the long-term solution involves educating Cambodia's children about the value of their heritage.
Meantime, officials are documenting all of the objects and archaeological sites that remain.
"Most of the objects that were stolen, we did not have record, we don't have inventory," Mr Sophady said.
"So those objects disappear from the country without records."
Much of the looting at Cambodia's historic sites has stopped, partly due to better security and partly because there's little left to steal.
But new sites will be discovered in the coming years, and they will be at risk.
Although many people regard antiquities theft and smuggling as a largely victimless, white-collar crime, the University of Glasgow's study shows that is not the case.
Such operations are often well organised and conducted violently, as seen most recently in Syria, Iraq and Mali, where some armed groups are thought to use the proceeds to finance their operations.
"The money that collectors in New York are spending on antiquities from around the world is going into the pockets of some very bad people - and I think the art world needs to step up and recognise their role in what's happening in these countries," Ms Davis said.
"The international law enforcement community and especially the art market itself need to work together to make sure that Cambodia's tragedy isn't repeated again and again and again - because right now it is being repeated."

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