Patrimonio Cultural (Continuación)

MundoOriente PróximoInternacionalTerrorismo Internacional, ,

Confucius said: "Study the past if you would define the future." In Iraq, the past is glorious and long.

This is where the world's first cities were built and where writing and organized government were first developed more than 5,000 years ago. This is the land that gave the world its first great literary work -- the Epic of Gilgamesh, king of the city of Uruk -- over 1,000 years before Homer, and over 2,000 years before Christ.

ISIS, like so many iconoclastic extremist groups through history, seeks to destroy the record of the past. In the past week, video has circulated showing neatly dressed figures wielding rather new-looking sledgehammers and destroying archaeological objects in the Mosul Museum.…  Seguir leyendo »

An undated image of the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud. REUTERS TV/Files

InternacionalTerrorismo Internacional,

What are the benefits of cruelty? This question occurred to me after forcing myself to watch some of the slickly produced propaganda videos of the group that calls itself the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL). The now-infamous productions often show the cruel killing of helpless captives in the most horrifying ways imaginable. It’s hard not to wonder about the intent of the filmmakers. It’s also hard not to wonder who the target audience is.

I also watched recent video of ISIS members in a museum smashing (alleged) archaeological relics from the very ancient Mesopotamian past. I felt a certain sense of historical irony while doing so.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente PróximoInternacionalTerrorismo Internacional, ,

The sack and pillage of the Mosul museum by the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria displayed a violence rarely seen since the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamyian. The bulldozing of the archaeological site of Nimrud marked a new step in the cultural cleansing underway in Iraq. These acts are a deliberate attack against civilians, minorities, heritage sites and traditions. In the minds of terrorists, murder and destruction of culture are inherently linked.

It is appalling to see the ravages of this violent extremism in a region that is a cradle of civilization, whose temples, palaces and frescoes have born witness to the glory of Iraq and Mesopotamia for the last 3,000 years.…  Seguir leyendo »

Europa, , , ,

Les convulsions politiques et militaires qui secouent l’Ukraine ces derniers mois n’en finissent pas de renvoyer commentateurs et politiques au souvenir des guerres d’empires. Les célébrations du centenaire de l’entrée en guerre des nations européennes, cet été, ont ajouté un goût sinistre de déjà-vu au conflit ukrainien, dont les prémices ont opportunément été récupérées par les grandes puissances. Mais l’Etat ukrainien, que son élite politique proclamait unitaire, était-il suffisamment expérimenté et assez volontaire pour transformer l’héritage soviétique? Les événements récents montrent l’échec d’une telle ambition et laissent le pays amputé de la Crimée au bord de l’éclatement.

L’épisode de la crise qui voit la Crimée intégrer la Fédération de Russie est lourd d’une symbolique méconnue de l’Occident alors qu’elle renvoie la Russie aux racines mêmes de son identité.…  Seguir leyendo »

ISIS’ Antiquities Sideline

MundoOriente PróximoInternacionalTerrorismo Internacional, , ,

The territorial gains made by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria have provoked fears — as well as tentative news reports — that archaeological sites in those countries are being attacked and looted, much as sites in Iraq were at the outset of the second Iraq war.

We have recently returned from southern Turkey, where we were training Syrian activists and museum staff preservationists to document and protect their country’s cultural heritage. That heritage includes remains from the ancient Mesopotamian, Assyrian, Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine and Islamic periods, along with some of the earliest examples of writing and some of the best examples of Hellenistic, Roman and Christian mosaics.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente Próximo, , ,

Alors que les Etats-Unis bombardent l'Etat islamique en Irak, il est urgent d'intervenir auprès des populations et de préserver un héritage culturel.

Ninive est dévastée, qui aura pitié d’elle ?

La région de Mossoul suit la violence de l’Etat islamique ; le patriarche des chrétiens Chaldéens irakiens lance un appel à la communauté internationale et au conseil de sécurité de l’ONU. Pour arrêter l’exode des chrétiens et des autres minorités religieuses devant la conquête du nord de l’Irak par l’Etat islamique, il demande «un soutien international et [celui] d’une armée professionnelle et bien équipée». Les patriarches des Eglises orientales réunis au Liban demandant eux aussi l’utilisation de «tous les moyens possibles et le plus rapidement possible.»…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente Próximo,

Since 2011, Egypt’s police force and other governmental authorities, overwhelmed by political upheaval, have let their protection of the country’s thousands of archaeological sites and museums fall to a bare minimum. Looters have taken full advantage of this opportunity.

More than a thousand objects were stolen from the Malawi National Museum in Minya last year and satellite photographs show some 10,000 hastily dug looting pits cratering the country’s archaeological sites. In some places, more organized gangs of looters have used dynamite and bulldozers to uncover and steal antiquities under the protection of guards armed with automatic weapons.

In response, the Egyptian government has attempted to stanch the flow of antiquities to the United States, which has some of the highest demand for these artifacts.…  Seguir leyendo »

Córdoba sin Catedral

EspañaCultura y Ciencia,

No van a conseguir nada y lo saben, al menos a corto plazo. En el plano legal está todo demasiado claro y la amenaza de la Sra. Díaz no pasa de flatus vocis, si «estudian la expropiación» a la velocidad con que ella cursó la carrera de Derecho: hablar por no callar y porque su gente espera oír algo, para arropar el anticlericalismo folclórico que la izquierda resucita de vez en cuando, modo de enmascarar su carencia de proyecto y programas globales que resuelvan algún problema ( junto al antimilitarismo y el antimonarquismo), o para distraer, ante nuevas elecciones, la atención de las gentes por la golfería institucionalizada en ERE, enchufismos o paro.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente Próximo, ,

Seventy-five years ago, about 120,000 Jews lived in Iraq. In Baghdad, they were prominent in business and the professions — doctors, lawyers, bankers, professors, musicians, writers, artists, engineers. Last summer, a visitor just back from Iraq told me he could account for only five Iraqi Jews alive in the country. Not 5,000. Not 500. Five. They are too old to leave. When they die, there will be none.

Iraq has been home to Jews for more than 2,500 years. The Babylonian Talmud was written there. And despite instances of sectarian violence, Jews and Arab Muslims managed by and large to cohabit, until anti-Semitism escalated in the 20th century and culminated in a great massacre that Iraqi Jews call the Farhud pogrom, or “the forgotten pogrom of the Holocaust.”…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente Próximo,

Egypt’s future lies in its history, particularly its archaeological history. For hundreds of years the mystery and wonders of the pyramids, the sphinx and the Valley of the Kings have attracted visitors from around the world. Tourism is the lifeblood of Egypt’s economy and touches the lives of most Egyptians, whether they work as tour guides, restaurant owners, craftsmen or bus operators. Egypt’s history holds the prosperity of the country’s future generations, including that of youths — more than 40 million Egyptians are age 30 or younger — who are seeking opportunities.

But thieves are raiding our archaeological sites and selling their findings to the highest bidders.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente Próximo, ,

Casi tres largos años de cruel guerra civil en Siria y la cifra de personas muertas, la mayor parte de las mismas civiles desarmados, sobrepasa el número de cien mil. Los partidarios de Bachar el Asad, una persona supuestamente culta formada en las universidades británicas, y sus no menos feroces detractores armados, no sólo incendian, destruyen y arrasan ciudades enteras aniquilando a sus indefensos habitantes, sino que —por si no fuera ya poco grave esto— están poniendo en peligro una región cuyo patrimonio artístico, arqueológico e histórico es uno de los más importantes del mundo. Me conmueve contemplar, por ejemplo, fotos e imágenes de soldados y combatientes civiles luchando entre las murallas, los fosos y las torres del Crac de los Caballeros, uno de los castillos más grandes e impresionantes que jamás he visto.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente Próximo,

In March 2011, as she had done every Friday afternoon for years, Jenny Poche Marrache held court at her 16th-century compound in the heart of Aleppo’s sprawling ancient market. Wearing a fur-lined leather coat to ward off the spring chill, the tiny 72-year-old regaled visitors with stories of this city’s cosmopolitan past. When her great-grandfather — a Bohemian crystal merchant — arrived here two centuries ago, Aleppo had already been a hub of East-West trade for half a millennium. Carpets from Persia, silks from China and high-quality local textiles filled the warehouses and stalls. Even at the height of the Crusades, Venetian agents exchanged timber and iron for Indian spices in the city’s souks.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente Próximo,

The conflict in Syria is destroying not only the lives of the Syrian people but their heritage — the world's heritage — as well.

Syria is a treasure house of history. Damascus, Aleppo, Palmyra and almost 10,000 other archaeological sites there hold the remains of thousands of years of culture. Greeks, Romans, Persians, Christians and Muslims lived and fought in what is now Syria. As the U.N. special envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, explained at a recent UNESCO meeting, "Few countries are as rich culturally, have had such a glorious past, are so important for what we are, all of us, for all the things that make, have made, human civilization."…  Seguir leyendo »

EspañaCultura y Ciencia

Gracias a su historia y a su situación geográfica, encrucijada de varias culturas, España es uno de los países más ricos de Europa en patrimonio monumental y artístico, capaz de competir con los de Italia y Francia. Precisamente, acabo de regresar de un largo viaje por estos dos países y he podido constatar la notable diferencia que los separa en preservación, restauración y puesta en valor de su patrimonio. Llama la atención el esfuerzo de Francia en mantener sus joyas patrimoniales, que incluyen también un amplio abanico de edificios civiles y hasta de pequeños comercios cargados de historia y encanto, frente al descuido apreciable en que se encuentra el inmenso patrimonio monumental y artístico italiano.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoÁfrica, , ,

La renaissance du Mali passera par le patrimoine culturel. La reprise des villes de Gao et de Tombouctou marque une étape vers la reconstruction de ce pays. Mais les violences de ces derniers jours rappellent combien le chemin sera long. La situation humanitaire reste critique, la population est en deuil et divisée, marquée par les privations de la guerre et plusieurs mois d’un régime de terreur. Comment reconstruire et par où commencer ?

La renaissance du Mali passera notamment par la culture. L’Unesco réhabilitera les mosquées et les mausolées détruits. La France, qui apporte son aide à la protection du territoire du Mali, appuiera la reconstruction de ce patrimoine - qui demande la mobilisation de l’Afrique et de toute la communauté internationale.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente Próximo,

When the Taliban blasted the famous Bamiyan Buddhas with artillery and dynamite in March 2001, leaders of many faiths and countries denounced the destruction as an act of cultural terrorism. But today, with the encouragement of the American government, Chinese engineers are preparing a similar act of desecration in Afghanistan: the demolition of a vast complex of richly decorated ancient Buddhist monasteries.

The offense of this Afghan monument is not idolatry. Its sin is to sit atop one of the world’s largest copper deposits.

The copper at the Mes Aynak mine, just an hour’s drive south of Kabul, is to be extracted under a roughly $3 billion deal signed in 2007 between Afghanistan and China’s Metallurgical Group Corporation.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente Próximo,

Few forms of conflict are so damaging to a country or its people as a prolonged civil war. By 1939, when Franco's forces had finished mopping up the last Republican resistance in Spain, more than half a million lay dead and some of the most beautiful city centres in Europe had been destroyed.

A similar pattern played out in 1970s Lebanon, which saw 150,000 casualties and the almost complete destruction of the elegant villas of Ottoman Beirut. In Afghanistan it was not Soviet invasion or occupation that killed most people or wrecked Kabul, but the internecine street fighting that followed in the early 1990 s.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoÁfrica,

The main gate of the Sidi Yahya mosque of Timbuktu will only be opened, according to local belief, when the end of the world comes. In Islamic eschatological writings, the “end times” will bring a reversal of the natural order of things, and all humans will be divinely judged.

A few weeks ago, militant Islamists of the Ansar Dine, or “Defenders of the Faith,” destroyed the main gate of the Sidi Yahya mosque, ostensibly to challenge and invalidate these beliefs. They have targeted the legendary city’s mosques, manuscripts and mausoleums and have engaged in the deliberate and systematic destruction of Mali’s cultural heritage.…  Seguir leyendo »

Internacional,

A few months ago a former British soldier made headlines for trying to sell part of the backside of the Saddam Hussein statue that was famously toppled in 2003. Though Saddam was long gone, the Iraqi government, happy to be rid of him, requested the return of the "artifact." Their interest in repatriating a symbol of their "dictator in hindsight" illustrates the unforeseeable significance of cultural property in foreign relations.

The example suggests that the U.S. might consider proactive protection of cultural property in regions of conflict as an underutilized opportunity for political diplomacy, if not outright negotiation.

The 1954 Hague Convention on Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict and the first (1954) and second (1999) protocols established responsibilities for military intervention.…  Seguir leyendo »

Europa

La celebración del Congreso de Europa Nostra en Lisboa constituye un acontecimiento de enorme importancia por la entrega de los premios europeos que se celebra en el Monasterio de los Jerónimos hoy, 1 de junio, en presencia de los Príncipes de Asturias y por los debates que se sucederán sobre la defensa y salvaguarda del patrimonio histórico y la preservación de monumentos y tradiciones en peligro. Europa Nostra, siguiendo las orientaciones de la UNESCO, del Consejo de Europa y de la Unión Europea, detenta, desde 1963 y sin perder el contacto con la creación artística contemporánea, la mayor red de organizaciones no-gubernamentales del viejo continente orientadas a la defensa del patrimonio cultural, material e inmaterial.…  Seguir leyendo »