Subject: Re: Appeals court rejects plan to sell Titanic artifacts
The Appeals Court decision that artifacts from the Titanic cannot be sold should be heralded as a victory against what is blatantly grave-robbery, and shall hopefully be used again in a legal arsenal against other such incidents.
Port Arthur pistols stolen
TWO antique pistols have been stolen from a museum at Port Arthur, Australia's most famous convict site. Port Arthur Historic Site curator Julia Clark said today a locked display cabinet was forced and the pistols taken yesterday morning. She said they were both 19th century military-style pistols and police were checking with dealers to ascertain their value on the collectors' market. Ms Clark said the pistols were bought in the 1880s by a privately-run museum which then operated at Port Arthur, but she did not know their earlier history. http://www.news.com.au/
Austria in talks over 'looted' art
A US appeals court has taken the surprise step of ordering Austria to hold talks with a woman who said the Nazis looted six Klimt paintings belonging to her family, according to reports. The works of art in question are said to have been stolen from Jewish businessman Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer when Germany invaded Austria in 1938. Mr Bloch-Bauer commissioned Gustav Klimt to paint two pictures of his wife Adele and bought three other landscapes from the artist. For many years his heir, 86-year-old Maria Altmann, has argued Austria wrongly claims the rights to paintings which are now housed in the country's national gallery. The Art Newspaper said she filed a lawsuit with a Californian court, citing Austria and the Austrian National Gallery are wrongfully withholding the art.
International law
Austria said it is immune from a US lawsuit because it is a foreign sovereign and therefore cannot be sued. It also said that because the events happened before 1952 on home soil, that is where a claim should be settled. But a US lower federal court agreed with Ms Altmann that the case was covered by international law. A panel of appeal judges ruled that "mediation could bring a resolution that would serve the parties better than results achieved through litigation". The case has now been passed on to a mediation unit which is expected to report back every 30 days.
Good faith
The Art Newspaper said it is unclear whether the mediation was designed to resolve who owned the paintings or whether a US court could hold Austria to account. But because the appeal was based on whether Austria could be sued in the US, legal arguments will be about this. Austria has indicated that it will comply with the court's order and participate in good faith. Mrs Altmann's lawyer, Randol Schoenberg, told The Art Newspaper: "There are about a million ways this could be resolved outside the court, but you have to have two willing parties to do that. "I've always been open to talking about settlement with them. But my client is 86 years old. We can't let this drag on forever."
Exile
One of the arguments relates to the wishes of Mr Bloch-Bauer's wife Adele, who in her will expressed the desire that he should leave the Klimt paintings to Austria's national gallery. He left behind all his possessions when fleeing the Nazis, including the paintings. It is said that before he died in exile in 1945 he had revoked his previous wills. Mr Schoenberg said the Austrian Government's argument "rests on position that the request of Adele Bloch-Bauer's will has the force of a legacy". http://news.bbc.co.uk/
Looting of Antiquities on the Rise
More and more impoverished villagers are scraping a living by digging up Afghan treasures in illegal excavations.
By Walid Baidar in Jalalabad (RCA No. 114, 9-Apr-02)
Pakistani smugglers are stepping up their practice of paying impoverished Afghan villagers a relative pittance to loot their nation's cultural treasure. The racket has gained momentum since the fall of the Taleban, as the new Kabul authorities are either powerless to stop them or preoccupied with other matters in post-conflict Afghanistan. The number of illegal excavations has more than doubled in recent months. The artefacts include - Buddhist icons, coins, jewellery, dishes - and they end up in the famous Andarshar bazaar in Peshawar, Pakistan, where they are scooped up by westerners. The best locations for the illegal digging are well known. The smugglers use copies of ancient maps to track long lost villages in the eastern provinces of Nangarhar, Laghman and Kunar. Two excavations were under way in the villages of Wazeer and Zaviee in the Khoghyani district of Nangarhar when IWPR visited in March. The Pakistani organiser of the illegal digs, who gave his name as Mohammad Zareef, a local man, has a shop of his own in the Andarshar bazaar. He is working on two hills near the villages which he believes are full of buried antiquities dating back to the ancient Buddhist civilisation that spanned the region more than 2,000 years ago. "I have come here with my Afghan apprentice," he told IWPR. "We have the maps of ancient Gandahara, and excavate places based on them." He pays the locals before starting work and he was dismissive about laws prohibiting such unlicensed digs. "It might be illegal to dig, but we excavate here at the suggestion of the villagers. They say the artefacts found here are (on their land and are) their personal property. So no one has the right to object," he said. Digging is also going on in the neighbouring districts of Sherzad, Pacheer and Agam, Surkh Road, Rodat and Haskamina. In Sherzad, there are two sites, on hills near the villages of Tutu and Nari Taba. The latest find was a pair of Buddhist sculptures, 1.5 m high. "These two stone idols had patterns of narrow lines inscribed on them, and they were very elegant and delicate," said Tutu villager Abdul Hashim, who led that dig. "Fortunately God helped us dig it out safely." At another site in Surkh Road, digging had continued for more than ten days without success. But the area, near Baloch village, is well known for the three Buddhist statues found there in the days before the Taleban, and the local diggers remain optimistic and work with enthusiasm. "After the people have breakfast we pick up our shovels and picks and head up the hill," said a Baloch villager, who gave his name as Shahsawar. "Traditionally, we cut our index fingers so we will have good luck." The motivation is obvious. "We hear everyday that some such person has found this many coins and earned that much money," said a villager from Rodat district who gave his name as Ezatullah. "I am jobless and I want to start digging too."
Another digger, over the provincial border in Laghman, felt himself well rewarded. "Since I have started my excavation I have earned more than 100,000 rupees," said the local villager, who gave his name as Mohammedajan. He said he knew what he was doing is illegal, but his circumstances left him with no other option, "I am poor and I have a wife and a family of 20 to support and feed. I have tried to find another job but I could not succeed. At least this allows me to feed my family." Maulawee Anwar ul-Haq, the head of the information and culture department for Nangarhar, was equally honest. "All these excavations are illegal and we are informed that they are going on but the smugglers have bribed the commanders of the local armed militias to protect them. "We have brought the matter to the attention of (Nangarhar provincial assembly chief) Haji Qadeer but he is busy with political problems. Besides, the local commanders carry more authority in their own areas than the head of the provincial assembly, who is only nominally in charge of the region." But he had hopes that the situation would change. "The interim authority has just two more months left before it is replaced," he said. "The new government will have to address these problems. Until then, we just don't have either the means or the authority to stop the smuggling."
Walid Baidar is a pseudonym for a journalist based in Jalalabad. http://www.iwpr.net/
Outlaw relic hunters disturb the peace of Civil War sites
Monday, April 15, 2002
By David Dishneau, The Associated Press
BOONSBORO, Md. -- The looters left signs only trained eyes could see: scars in the earth where shovels were used to dig up relics of Civil War battles. Investigators found 73 such refilled holes in January on weed-covered Wise's Field, a remote piece of Western Maryland real estate where Union and Confederate soldiers clashed during the Battle of South Mountain on Sept. 14, 1862. Authorities don't know what was taken from the federally owned site -- probably bullets, maybe some brass buttons or a belt buckle. Such items are prized by collectors willing to pay thousands for certain artifacts that can be traced to specific battles, regiments or soldiers.
"When someone takes that artifact out of the ground, they're taking more than that item; they're taking part of the story that item has to tell," said Al Preston, a state historical interpreter who has studied the battle. Penalties of up to five years in prison and $250,000 in fines for removing archaeological resources from federal lands haven't stopped determined diggers like those who violated Wise's Field. Despite scores of prosecutions reported annually by the National Park Service, violations have increased over the past decade at Civil War sites in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia, said Ed Wenschhof, chief ranger at the nearby Antietam National Battlefield. He said the 3,200-acre park, site of the war's bloodiest one-day battle, has two open cases of looting, including one dating to the late 1990s. Elsewhere in the park service's National Capital Region, rangers are investigating the removal of items from Harpers Ferry National Historical Park and several sites along the Appalachian Trail.
The thefts sometimes aren't discovered for weeks.
"I guess you get a little bit more remote, people take advantage of the situation," Preston said. One of the biggest such cases was resolved in 1997, when two men were sentenced to several months in prison and ordered to pay more $25,000 in restitution for excavating more than 1,000 artifacts -- including bullets, belt buckles, canteens and harmonicas -- from the Petersburg National Battlefield Park in Virginia. More often, people are caught in the act of searching with electronic metal detectors. Between Antietam and the Monocacy National Battlefield, a smaller Maryland site managed by the Antietam staff, rangers arrest about one such prospector every other month, Wenschhof said. The penalty for possessing a metal detector in the parks is $50. There are spots, though, that may be searched legally for Civil War artifacts. Private owners of battlefield lands sometimes give relic hunters like Donald Komjian permission to search and dig on their property.
Komjian, a postal employee from Huntersville, N.C., spent a recent sunny Tuesday afternoon walking the spacious back yard of Philip and Lilli Wilson's 43-acre farm on the Antietam battlefield. He found two .58 caliber Union bullets, a common variety known as three-ringers that fetch $110 per 100 on the Web site www.cwrelics.com. Komjian, 50, says he keeps what he finds for his personal collection of about 1,000 items gathered during 15 years of what he calls "sniffing" for relics. "I love American history, especially Civil War history," he said. "Being right here, in the middle of a battlefield where you know there was a lot of fighting going on -- this is a dream come true for me." It's a thrill, he said, to find an unfired bullet and imagine the young soldier who dropped it, perhaps while fumbling with his muzzle-loading rifle.
"You know he was standing right there," Komjian said.
He said he never hunts relics on federal land during his twice-yearly trips to Maryland. About a half-dozen private landowners have given him permission to prospect on their land, he said. In return, he brings them soda pop or autographs of North Carolina NASCAR drivers. He won't be coming back to the Wilsons' land, though. This is their second year of allowing bullet-hunting and Lilli Wilson says it will be the last. Word spread quickly after she and her husband gave a few polite prospectors permission, and soon the hobbyists were showing up on her doorstep or making insistent, sometimes belligerent phone calls, she said. "I look at it two ways," she said. "By hunting the relics for themselves or for museums, people are able to learn about the soldiers. The other way I look at it is that it's history and it really should be left alone. It's sacred ground, and to us living here, it's just home." http://www.post-gazette.com/