Stolen items from Cambodia’s temples join a network that leads to auction houses and museums worldwide. "They come to steal our Buddha,” says Tan Chay, a general with the heritage police when asked about what looters seek in pre-Angkorian antiquities. Since the national elections of 1993, Cambodia’s borders have become so porous, traffickers of everything from women to drugs and antiquities have had few if any problems conducting their illicit trade.
The looting of Angkorian sites had its heyday from the late 1980s when Vietnam withdrew its troops and left Cambodia divided into several political factions. The result was that its most valuable sites of special archeological interest were left unguarded. This continued into the 1990s until the UN-sponsored elections in 1993. During those 10 and more years an estimated $20m-worth of artifacts disappeared into local and international markets. As the supply of 6th- to 13th-century Angkorian artifacts become more scarce, market demands shifted to pre-Angkorian sites, dating from the Iron Age.
Since 1993, France, a member of the international co-ordination committee to safeguard and restore Angkor Wat, has spearheaded many efforts to preserve Cambodia’s cultural heritage. Some of its contributions include registering Angkor as a world heritage site, clearing landmines in the Siem Reap province and providing training to the heritage police force. With 520 officers and financed by the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts since 2007, it has been charged with guarding the Angkor Wat temple area. Chay believes its sites are safe from looting, an opinion not shared by all.
Unfortunately, there are only 180 personnel currently available to protect the rest of Cambodia. Looting incidents are occurring all over Cambodia with the northwestern province of Banteay Meanchey, which borders Thailand, having been the most active in recent years. Koh Ker is also another heavily looted temple while the Thma Puok site saw 100 hectares completely stripped. In the temple of Phnom Banan, every dancing aspsara was decapitated and at the temple of Banteay Chhmar, looters used heavy machinery to remove large sections of the walls. These locations are but a few on a long list.
Looters are not only looking for remarkable sculptural pieces but also easily portable items such as beads, tools, brass and ceramics that are more commonly found in ancient burial grounds. Some were even bold enough to steal a 748-year-old Buddha, weighing about 100kg, from an inhabited wat. Many of the items are either smuggled overland into Thailand or by sea to Singapore and from there they disappear on to the world market.
The international community has established laws to help protect a country’s heritage, for example the Unesco convention of 1970, which aims to prevent the loss of cultural property and allows member countries to recover pilfered items. Unfortunately, Thailand and Singapore are not signatories, which has made the ancient sites of southeast Asia easy targets. This situation is exacerbated by lax laws in the US where as long as the export permits are issued by the country of origin, their importation is allowed.
Recovering an item can require the government to prove the theft by providing a photo of the object in its original state. Cambodia was among the first countries to sign the 1995 Unidroit convention, which requires stolen antiquities to be returned to their country of origin. Most recently the US and Cambodia signed the 2003 memorandum of understanding, based on the 1970 Unesco convention, for a period of five years. It specifically states that its purpose is to reduce the incentive to loot unique archaeological objects that represent Cambodia’s cultural heritage, which surprisingly covers only artifact's between AD6 and AD16.
With the agreement ending this September, the Cambodian government has recently submitted a request to the US for an extension. Deciding the outcome will be the US cultural property advisory committee. Its members are archaeologists, collectors and experts from prestigious museums, all of whom are appointed by the US. If the extension is approved it could also provide protective laws for pre-Angkorian artifacts, but this is only wishful thinking as lobbyists from the museums and collectors strongly oppose such sanctions.
“The MoU should cover everything dating back to at least 10,000 BC,” says Dr Dougald O’Reilly, one of Southeast Asia’s foremost archaeologists and founder of Heritage Watch. Their mission is to stop the illegal trade of antiquities in Southeast Asia and educate the people of the importance of cultural preservation.
Interpol estimates that international trafficking of antiquities, believed to be one of the largest illicit trades, led only by the trafficking of drugs and arms, generates more than $10 billion a year. To yield figures like this requires a highly organised network of transportation and corrupt custom officials, police, regulators, curators and politicians.
Many compare the trafficking of antiquities to that of the drug trade. The methods used to move them into their submarkets makes tracking them nearly impossible. A large amount of these items end up in the hands of private collectors, museums or are purchased from the market centres of cities such as London and New York. Unlike the drugs trade, buyers of antiquities have little to fear when negotiating business transactions as agreements are usually conducted in reputable, upscale auction houses. Additionally the regulations put in place to protect these items often have to meet specific conditions before authorities will take action.
Fewer than 8,000 tourists are believed to have visited Angkor Wat in 1993, by 2007 this number leaped to well over 1.5m with an expected 3m by 2010. With 85% of all tourists visiting only Siem Reap’s Angkor archaeological park, which sprawls over 400sq km, it is the most popular reason why tourists visit Cambodia.
Many will not even think that the glass beads they bought in the local market at the park are genuine artifacts and that by buying them they have committed a crime. Ignorance is not an excuse. Travellers need to be responsible when visiting archaeological ruins. The International Council of Museums expects many museums to follow the standards set by the Code of Ethics for Museums, by publishing acquisition records, establishing an item’s origin and determining if the item is missing or stolen.
By doing so museums can preserve scientific and historical information, promote educational programmes and build public trust. Experts argue that museums and auction houses do not make enough effort to ensure items are obtained legally and the absence of any known provenance could be incriminating. Many allegations have been made against the major museums of New York, Boston, Princeton and Los Angeles, just to name a few, for having received illicit antiquities. Heritage Watch believes that an estimated 80% of catalogued items from international auction houses are supplied with no information about their origin.
Some argue that what ultimately matters is the preservation of artefacts, not how acquisition occurs.
“This is a common argument used by dealers and collectors to justify their activities,” says O’Reilly. As long as the world continues to seek out beautiful objects, looting will persist no matter what regulatory systems are in place, because prevention of it would require unacceptable costs.
Nevertheless, one thing is clear, cultural heritage will be lost until sites have proper protection, first-rate documentation, adherence to a code of ethics, a suitable national and international legal framework and, most importantly, proper education. If all Cambodian archaeological evidence is lost, so is the opportunity to understand one of the region’s greatest historical powers.
With that understanding comes the building blocks that formed the social and political structures, prehistoric health, ancient technologies, art objects, trade patterns and architecture of an ancient culture. Cultural heritage is not a renewable resource.
