BARBELITH underground
 

Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.


Underground > Head Shop >

Responsiblity for the safekeeping of the world's international cultural heritage.

  
 
Olulabelle
17:06 / 02.04.05
I've been thinking about this for some time, partly because I am working for Wiltshire council, assessing the viability of English Heritage's Stonehenge Project, a plan to return the stones to their original setting as advised by the World Heritage Convention.

The World Heritage Convention (UNESCO) was set up to 'identify cultural and natural heritage of outstanding universal value throughout the world, and ensure its protection through international cooperation' but is not completely succesful in doing so. For instance, in 2001 the Taliban were able to extensively bomb and destroy the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan and even though the Buddhas were a designated World Heritage site, nobody intervened to stop it happening.


Before and after detail of the destroyed Buddha.

More recently, the city of Babylon, (not yet a World Heritage site due to the fact that it is considered 'trans-boundary' but nevertheless one of the world's most important archaeological sites and of huge cultural significance) was used by the Americans as an army base during the Iraq war and significant archaeological detail at the site has been damaged extensively.


Damaged detail of the Ishtar gate.

I think that each country should have a duty to protect international heritage within its borders, but many of us don't. The current abomination that is the road scheme around Stonehenge shows how we have failed to do this, as does the application by Tarmac to quarry right next to the Thorborough Henges which is currently being campaigned against.


Stonehenge surrounded by roads.


Thornborough henge.

But if countries don't protect their treasures, do we as an international community have the right to intervene? Setting up bodies whose job is to oversee that our cultural heritage stays in tact for future generations does not seem to work, because the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddha's was announced in advance and they were destroyed openly. Despite the fact that there was mass international objection to the proposition nothing actually happened to stop the Taliban when they actually went ahead with the destruction. Bodies like the WHC only have limited powers, they can object and bring the problem to the media's attention but they cannot legally physically intervene.

So how far should we as an international community go to ensure these internationally valuable structures are protected? Do we have the right to forcibly stop countries destroying archaeological remains which are within their own borders? In the case of the damage to Babylon (where Iraq was not responsible but the invading country was) what could the international community have done?

Is it our 'business'? Should we do anything? And if so, what are the limits we should go to?
 
 
Phex: Dorset Doom
19:35 / 02.04.05
The trouble is 'physically intervening' to protect a site such as the Bamiyan Buddhas would mean military intervention: sending in armed forces to set up a perimeter around the statues until the Taliban assured the U.N that they would be protected. If the Taliban decided that removing this 'affront to Allah' (as I remember them calling it) was worth fighting for then lives would be lost on both sides. I doubt any Buddhist would say that a statue was worth more than human life, even fundamentalist-asshole life.
As for the Americans in Babylon, well they're definitely wrong to do it, and it's one of the U.S's many 'I can't believe they even considered it' moments (is there any strategic advantage to setting up camp in a structure that could be destroyed by a trebuchet?), but, as with the Taliban, what can be done? UNESCO can try to convince the American military to move, but physical intervention would again be impossible.
It seems in both these cases that intervening to protect these sites would cost more in human life and 'hearts and minds' than we lose by the destruction of our heritage.
 
 
sleazenation
20:51 / 02.04.05
There is also a question of priorities - can you justify military intevention for mere artifacts while standing by as civillians are being massacred in circumstances similar to Rwanda and Dafur...
 
 
hoatzin
11:10 / 03.04.05
This is the same argument that was used in the R&D thread. There are enough resources in the world to do both, we don't have to choose one or the other.
I think that using military force to prevent the destruction of a treasured site reduces the users of force to the same moral level as the would-be destroyers. Isn't this another case of whether the end justifies the means?
Although the Taliban announced in advance their intentions with regard to the buddhas, I don't know how much protest there was from other countries round the world, and the tragedy is made worse by the fact that the successors to the Taliban seem set on 'restoring' them...
In the case of UK we have the option of civil protests and delays. Personally I think passive resistance is a good option. Perhaps a group along the lines of Greenpeace would help internationally.
 
 
sleazenation
11:42 / 03.04.05
I don't think it's the same arguement as the R&D thread at all - the question is not either-or but, as I stated, a question of degree and priorities and as presently the international community doesn't even seem able to agree of prompt military measures of preventing genocide, thus I doubt their ability to prevent the destruction of cultural items to be any better.

Further, if military intervention is part of the equation then the question of the value of life must follow - if not in relation to prevention of genocides then at least in terms of the amount of people you are willing to risk in an armned deployment to safeguard artifacts.
 
 
Olulabelle
11:46 / 03.04.05
By 'physically intervene' I am not advocating military intervention, what I meant was physically be at the structures to protect them. Obviously this brings potential problems as Phex points out, but if some sort of 'guardians' were appointed and placed it wouldn't necessarily end in fighting.
 
 
hoatzin
11:58 / 03.04.05
Great! Let's have a Greenpeace type group then- any ideas for a name?
I don't agree that all the 'treasures' [my word] are mere artifacts- artifacts they may be, but 'mere', no. The construction of henges, pyramids, huge statues, etc already have an enormous amount of faith, hope, knowledge and in many cases lives, invested in them and they surely deserve preservation 'for the good of our souls'.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
08:39 / 04.04.05
Come again?

Re : The Bamiyan Buddhas...Surely this is a near perfect demonstration of the impermanence which is a feature of this universe and that doctrine?

In fact, nothing lasts, does it? A buddhist may well say that your notion of a 'soul' is nothing more than your thinking structure recoiling from its knowledge of its own inevitable demise and projecting itself immortally into a non-existent future, concerned as seems to be with its own continuation above all else.

What is the reason for wishing to preserve these things?
 
 
Tryphena Absent
09:37 / 04.04.05
We should preserve these things because we want to map our past and these artefacts are all of our histories. In the face of death we need to know that we endure.

Having said that I don't think that standing in front of a statue that the Taliban are about to blow up is a good idea. Unless you want to die? In which case why bother to preserve these things? That really was a situation that would have required troops.
 
 
Olulabelle
11:48 / 04.04.05
I think these things should be preserved because they are legacies of the human race. It doesn't matter what religion or civilisation they were created for, or by, the point is that they 'belong' to every single person on the planet - everyone alive, everyone that has lived and everyone that will live. They are our history, they tell the story of us as sentient beings, our beliefs and our way of life.

Of course life is more important than a statue, but these things should not be destroyed just because they conflict with the current thinking of the resident population (or government) of a country.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
14:58 / 04.04.05
I agree but in that particular instance it would have been too dangerous.
 
 
lord henry strikes back
21:11 / 04.04.05
I would like to start by making it clear that, for the most part, I am in favour of the preservation of historical relics for both the enjoyment of, and study by, both our own and future generations. However, I think there are a few important issues here that are not being considered.

To begin with, the idea that we (whomever that may be) should be preserving these relics conjures up worrying images of 19th century Englishmen swaning around the globe, plundering the antiquities of other nations, under the banner of 'saving them'. Is there not a line (and a very blurred one I admit) between preserving a people's history and in some way laying false claim to it? How do we make sure that this line is not crossed?

It must also be remembered that one civilisation's great monument can be a symbol of another's oppression. The case of the buddas is a difficult one (partly because of my dislike of all religious fundementalists) but, as I understand it, Muslims find representations of the natural world offensive. Should a whole culture put up with something that offends them for the good of history? Would the same argument be made about Nazi monuments in post-war France, or Soviet architecture in the post-communist Czech Republic?

Finally there can be conflicts of interests. Do we really have the right to tell the Indian government that they cannot flood their own land to create a hydro-electric dam to power villages that currently have no power? And if we could, could that not become a political tool to keep developing nations down? Interested parties, as it were, could always find a 'historically important' reason to block the building of a dam, factory, farmland, whatever.

Just wondering what people think about these points...
 
 
Olulabelle
22:52 / 04.04.05
Well, I think that blatant destruction as cited in my first post is not the same as needing to flood a valley to create a dam, although obviously if the Indian government wished to flood the area around the Taj Mahal then I might feel differently, and perhaps try to suggest a more acceptable area.

With regard to religious structures, the Bamiyan buddhas were built long before the Muslim Taliban controlled the land. Indeed, if the Taliban considered them so unsuitable as to have needed bombing, I wonder how the Muslim population of Afghanistan lived with them for so long? I think partly the reason for such destruction might lie in fundamentalism; presumably the Muslim population that lived with them prior to the Taliban felt that they were worth preserving.

The Iraqi's also preserved Babylon, although as I understand it Saddam did cause the city some damage prior to the American invasion. And by dictionary definition some might consider the Bush admistration to be fairly fundamentalist, so by that reckoning the ancient city of Babylon was a shoo-in for driving tanks about in!
 
 
Axolotl
19:54 / 11.04.05
There was a thing in the paper about this today. Apparently Hadrian's Wall is being damaged by walkers to the extent where UNESCO are thinking of declaring it in danger, making the U.K one of only 2 developed nations to be destroying world heritage sites.
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
14:38 / 12.04.05
I feel a sudden urge to find some big spiky boots and head north...
 
  
Add Your Reply