| Lokesvara,
northern face of Neak
Poan's central sancturay
1938
1995
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National Law
In the early 1990s, and with international legal assistance,
amendments were made in the penal code of the State of Cambodia
to introduce sanctions on the destruction, theft and illicit
traffic of cultural property to enable existent authorities
to immediately address the growing problem. Assistance was
also provided in drafting a comprehensive set of laws for
the protection of cultural property. Both the cultural property
laws and the statutes were adopted in February of 1993 as
Decisions of the Supreme National Council. Though these
actions proved neither immediately effective nor lasting,
they were important precursors to more permanent measures
taken in post-election years.
In January of 1996, the Law
on the Protection of Cultural Heritage was promulgated.
This law aims at protecting cultural property against acts
of vandalism, illicit transfer of ownership, excavations,
illicit export and import.
Cultural property is meant as "any work produced by
human agency and any natural phenomenon of a scientific,
historic, artistic or religious nature which bears witness
to a certain stage in the development of a civilization
or of the natural world and whose protection is in the public
interest." This is a general definition which does
not fix any particular limit, such as limits on age or the
monetary value of the property, and which leaves wide freedom
of judgment to the executing authority. It is also compatible
with the definition given by Article 1 of the UNESCO 1970
Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the
Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural
Property.
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In order to ensure effective protection of the various
historical sites, which often contain several monuments
and which cover a wide area of the territory, the law provides
for the delimitation of protected sites. Indeed the Cambodian
cultural heritage includes a number of groups of immoveable
cultural property, each of which forms a homogeneous whole
and has in itself unique historical, architectural and scientific
value. It is important to take specific protective measures
in order to safeguard the integrity of these groups. The
demarcation of these sites and the protective measures are
contained in the
Royal Decree of 28 May 1994 concerning the zoning and
management of the Siem Reap/Angkor region. Moreover, the
protected monumental sites and archaeological reserves are
of public ownership and any property inside is automatically
classified.
This legal instrument allows the Kingdom of Cambodia:
- to fight illicit traffic in cultural property by
taking, as a matter of urgency, the necessary executing
measures;
- to fulfill its obligations under the 1970 UNESCO
Illicit Traffic Convention and to benefit therefore from
protective mechanisms under that international instrument;
- to guarantee progressively an effective legal protection
of the national cultural heritage;
- to give concrete expression to the inscription of
the Angkor site on the World Heritage List in providing
the legal protection required by the 1972 World Heritage
Convention.
The law also takes into account the international commitments
of the Kingdom of Cambodia in the field of the protection
of cultural heritage and gives concrete expression to several
provisions of indirect application contained in the 1970
illicit traffic Convention.
The Cultural Heritage Police
More information
Art inventories
Thorough inventories of art objects held in national institutions
(national and provincial museums, the Angkor Conservation
compound) were established prior to the wars of the 1970s-80s.
Many on-site objects, including monuments themselves, were
also well-documented, if not always specifically inventoried.
The challenge now facing the Khmer government is to establish
full post-war inventories of the artistic heritage. When
compared with pre-war documentation, these will serve as
the basis for identifying stolen art, and seeking its return.
Up-to-date inventories are also, of course, essential to
discouraging or even preventing further theft, and to retrieving
objects looted in our day.
At Angkor, the first steps have been taken in this direction.
Khmer art specialists from the Ecole Française d'Extrême-Orient
(EFEO), one of whom had been involved in establishing pre-war
inventories, worked from 1994-1998 with three graduates
of the Department of Archaeology and with support from UNESCO,
to establish a new inventory of the Angkor Conservation's
collection of stone statuary, which had been inventoried
before recent wars. APSARA is now preparing a comparison
of the pre- and post-war inventories in view of establishing
a list of stolen objects. The Ecole Française d'Extême-Orient
holds photographs of the pre-war inventoried objects in
its Parisian archives. Archival research will therefore
allow APSARA to illustrate each of these missing objects.
The final document will be distributed to INTERPOL and other
agencies working in collaboration with the Khmer government
in the fight against stolen art.
This work takes its inspiration in part from an earlier
publication, One Hundred Missing Objects: Looting at Angkor.
The result of a collaborative effort between the International
Council of Museums (ICOM) and the EFEO, this book, first
published in 1993, and revised and re-edited in 1997, provides
illustrated descriptions of some of the most important pieces
of the Conservation collection known to have been stolen
between the 1970s and 1990s. The book has made a significant
contribution to the fight against looting of Khmer art,
prompting the restitution of numerous published pieces to
the Cambodian government.
Consciousness-raising Campaigns
APSARA strives to raise the consciousness of the local,
national and concerned international communities on all
aspects of the Angkor site, including history, traditions,
social and environmental and cultural heritage protection
concerns. Following are a few of the specific activities
carried out over the past few years to this effect.
Over the course of 1994-95 APSARA carried out research
on various aspects of Angkor to complement data gathered
during the ZEMP project (Zoning and Environmental Management
Plan, supervised by UNESCO, following the temporary inscription
of Angkor on the World Heritage List) in view of compiling
a single document to be used as a basic manual for work
at Angkor. The final book, Angkor.
A Manual for the Past, Present and Future, was published
by APSARA in 1996. This English version was soon followed
by a translation into French and Khmer.
Tani Forum on Cultural Heritage Management: In the framework
of research on the ancient
kiln sites discovered in Tani village, the Department
of Culture held a Forum on Cultural Heritage Management
at Vat Run, near Tani village in 1996. The Forum provided
villagers as well as school and religious leaders the opportunity
to exchange information and opinions on cultural heritage
protection with local, regional, provincial and even national
authorities, along with members of international research
teams. For this occasion, APSARA worked with a local shadow
theater (sbaek touc) troupe to create a show on cultural
heritage protection. The Forum was followed by this night-long
performance, which attracted villagers from throughout the
surrounding region. In 1998, APSARA also published a brochure
on kiln site protection. The three versions, Khmer, English
and Japanese, have been distributed throughout the region
to concerned parties. Another brochure will be published
in year 2002.
In the framework of the on-going project to develop a
global conservation program for the temples of Angkor, APSARA
is currently working with village and district authorities
in the Angkor Park to promote cultural heritage protection
and preservation awareness, and to encourage the establishment
of healthy relations between villagers and tourists. While
school programs to this effect remain in the planning stages,
local community leaders have already begun to educate villagers
about the importance of keeping children in school, rather
than abandoning their schooling for the immediate gratification
to be had in chasing tourists around the Park... Educational
and cultural activities for local residents are also to
be established with the Buddhist pagodas situated within
the enclosure of Angkor Vat.
Consciousness-raising through the Media
On the occasion of the international exhibition of Khmer
art, held in Paris, Washington, Tokyo and Osaka in 1996
and 1997, the media of these countries gave wide coverage
to the problem of looting of Khmer temples. Amongst the
many articles and documentaries produced at that time, three
were of particular significance:
- A National Geographic Television team spent more
than one year collaborating with APSARA in preparation of
a documentary on looting at Angkor. The film was first aired
on August 31, 1997.
- A team from the Franco-German television station
ARTE worked with APSARA personnel in May of 1997 to produce
a 52-minute documentary on the fight against illicit traffic
of Khmer cultural goods.
- Over the course of July 1997, the French newspaper
Le Monde published a series of twelve articles on illicit
traffic across the world. One in this series, entitled "Les
tribulations de la déesse d'Angkor", described
the international odyssey of a statue stolen from the Angkor
Conservation (DCA 7081) finally restituted to Cambodian
authorities on June 2, 1997.
Numerous other documentaries and newspaper articles have
been produced on the subject since the 1997 exhibition.
The Khmer national media has, particularly in 1998-9 begun
to give significant coverage to the problem at Angkor and
elsewhere in the country.
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