Up to £7m likely for Schiele masterpiece looted by Nazis
Maev Kennedy, arts and heritage correspondent Friday April 11, 2003 The Guardian
A masterpiece of 20thcentury art, which hung for half a century in a public art gallery in Austria before being recognised as Nazi war loot, will be auctioned in June by the heirs of the original owner. The search through museums and private collections across the world for thousands of works of art looted by the Nazis and still missing has intensified during the past decade. In Britain, the Tate gallery has returned one Dutch landscape to its Jewish owners, and the British Museum's trustees are still considering what to do about a claim for four old-master drawings. Dozens more works of art in British collections still have a question mark over them because their history during the Nazi years cannot be established. The painting by Egon Schiele was bought in 1953 by the Neue Galerie, in Linz, Austria, and the proprietors were unaware that it had been stolen by the Nazis in 1938 from the Viennese home of Daisy Hellman, a Jewish arts patron. When it was finally traced last year the mayor of Linz presented it to Hellman's heirs, who plan to sell it at Sotheby's, London, for between £5m and £7m. The painting is a rarity: a nearly cheerful picture by the usually gloomy Schiele, better known for his skeletal and anguished, often bleakly erotic, human figures. Over the past 20 years prices have steadily risen for his work. One of his landscapes, sold in New York 10 years ago, fetched more than $9m; two years ago at Sotheby's an early Schiele portrait sold for £7.7m. The landscape is of Krumau, a town now in the Czech Republic, where Schiele's mother was born. The artist, who died of the 1918 flu epidemic aged 28, often painted parts of the town, and seems to have regarded it as a refuge from the troubles of his life.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
US lobby could threaten Iraqi heritage
Donald MacLeod Thursday April 10, 2003
Apparent lobbying by American art dealers to dismantle Iraq's strict export laws has heightened fears about the looting of the country's antiquities as order breaks down in the last stages of the war. After the last gulf war a lot of treasures disappeared onto the black market and archaeologists in Britain and the US are concerned this will be repeated on a much larger scale in the power vacuum after the fall of Saddam Hussein, as happened in Afghanistan. For poor Iraqis the temptation to sell stolen antiquities will be greatly increased if it is known there is a ready market in the west. Iraq, which encompasses Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilisation, is so rich in remains dating back 10,000 years that it has been described as one vast archaeological site. Dominque Collon, assistant keeper in the department of the ancient near east at the British Museum, said today that alarm bells had been set ringing by reports of a meeting between a coalition of antiquities collectors and arts lawyers, calling itself the American Council for Cultural Policy (ACCP), with US defence and state department officials before the start of the war. The group offered help in preserving Iraq's invaluable archaeological collections, but archaeologists fear there is a hidden agenda to ease the way for exports post-Saddam. The ACCP's treasurer, William Pearlstein, has described Iraq's laws as "retentionist", and the group includes influential dealers who favour a relaxation of the current tight restrictions on the ownership and export of antiquities. Dr Collon said: "This is just the sort of thing that will encourage looting. Once there is American blessing they have got a market for these antiquities and it becomes open season. The last thing we want is condoned looting." The ACCP denied accusations of wanting to change Iraq's treatment of antiquities and said at the January meeting they offered post-war technical and financial assistance and conservation support. This week an international group of archaeologists petitioned the UN and Unesco, a cultural education body, to ensure that whatever body oversees post-war Iraq takes steps to preserve its priceless heritage from destruction and looting. They urge that security personnel be posted throughout Iraq at its many archaeological sites and museum storage facilities as soon as possible to halt future thefts. "In the aftermath of the previous gulf war, Iraqi archaeological sites and museum collections suffered from extensive looting, the fruits of which continue to disappear into the international black market for illegally procured antiquities," they say. The archaeologists and scholars want their Iraqi colleagues to continue in or be restored to their positions in museums, archaeological projects, and universities. The Iraqi antiquities authority should be offered the assistance of specialists from around the world to begin restoration and preservation of antiquities that have been damaged and the training of a new generation of Iraqi experts. They add: "Whatever body oversees post-war Iraq [should] be ready to offer material assistance to the Iraqi authorities and any concerned international agency prepared to apprehend and prosecute persons responsible for the theft and purchase of Iraqi cultural heritage materials, and to strive for the recovery of those materials and their restoration to the Iraqi people". http://education.guardian.co.uk/
Elgin Marbles: Centerpiece of new museum?
Greece preparing arts for 2004 Olympics
NEW YORK (AP) --The halves of a carving depicting an ancient Greek chariot race interlock on the gallery wall like parts of a jigsaw puzzle. "Both pieces, currently divided between Athens and London, should be rejoined at the New Acropolis Museum," says the caption. Greece is presenting its case for the return of the Elgin Marbles in an exhibit at the Alexander S. Onassis Cultural Center in Manhattan, using nationalism, finger-pointing and appeals to fair play to gain support. The spectacular setting awaiting the treasured sculptures -- if they're ever returned from exile -- is laid out in "The New Acropolis Museum." But like mythical playthings of the gods, these fifth century B.C. carvings may be fated to remain in Britain, their destiny ordained by museum politics. Greece is rushing to build the $100 million New Acropolis Museum to house the Marbles for the 2004 Summer Olympics, locating it next to the rocky citadel in the heart of ancient Athens. The three-level museum will be topped with a glass- walled Parthenon Gallery to display the carvings in brilliant sunlight, just 800 feet from, and slightly below, the temple they once adorned. Innovative and earthquake-proof, the museum aims to rebut longtime British objections to the Elgin Marbles' return -- that Greece lacked first-rate display space to assure the safety of the 480-foot-long section of the Parthenon frieze. British officials are also worried that a repatriation of the Marbles, even on loan, could set a precedent for other claims on antiquities removed from original sites. The Greeks counter that the Marbles belong in their homeland, and they've proposed opening an Athens' branch of the British Museum so the sculptures would be maintained under British ownership. Contacts "are being held at multiple levels -- political, public opinion, between experts ... we do not think the British side has 'shut the door' to communication with the Greek side," said Dimitris Pandermalis, president of the museum construction organization.
Finding a place
The tale of the 2,500-year-old Marbles -- 17 figures depicting an Athenian procession -- is almost Homeric. The carvings were purchased in 1803 by Lord Elgin, the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, which occupied Athens at the time. The sculptures were dismantled from the Parthenon, shipped to London and sold to the British Museum, quickly becoming the most celebrated pieces in the collection.
The new museum "offers the opportunity for Britain ... to reunify the sculptures of the Parthenon for this and subsequent generations," Minister of Culture Evangelos Venizelos writes in the exhibit catalog. Until the sculptures are returned, Venizelos adds, "the spaces for the metopes, frieze, and figures of the pediment will remain void -- as a constant reminder of this unfilled debt to world heritage." The frieze formed an ornamental band of marble carvings around the top of the Parthenon. Additional sculptures decorated the metopes -- openings for structural beams -- and the pediment, or portico, on the roof line. Greece will show the remnants of the Parthenon frieze that it managed to keep, along with other Athenian treasures, at the New Acropolis Museum opening for the Summer Games. Other stages of the museum will follow. The New York exhibit, open through April 9 with no entry fee, features elaborate scale models of the new museum, including a detailed layout of the entire Acropolis site, architectural drawings and topography maps. Four priceless relief sculptures in marble dating from the sixth, fifth and fourth centuries B.C. are also shown. The architectural elements will be displayed April 22-May 24 at the Royal Institute of British Architects in London as a part of an exhibit on the 2004 Summer Games and its impact on Athens. However, the marble reliefs won't be sent to London, said Amalia Cosmetatou, director of cultural events for the Onassis foundation.
Using light The 250,000-square-foot museum is going up at the southern base of the Acropolis, at the ancient road that led up to the "sacred rock" in classical times under the great leader, Pericles. A 1.5-mile walkway links the archaeological sites in this font of Western civilization. Visitors will ascend through the galleries to the top level, where the crowning gallery is being laid out on the same plane and with the precise geometry and harmonious dimensions of the columned Parthenon. Architect Bernard Tschumi of New York, who won the competition to design the New Acropolis Museum, is using glass walls, skylights and an atrium to bring Athens' brilliant sunlight into the museum to illuminate the sculptures. The principle is demonstrated in the exhibit with a spotlight-with- dimmer directed at the relief sculptures to show how the carved figures become highly visible and then obscure in the changing light.
http://www.cnn.com/
Baghdad archeological museum looted
A Baghdad mob looted Iraq's largest archeological museum amid a breakdown in civil authority following the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime, an AFP reporter said. A dozen looters helped themselves in ground floor rooms at the National Museum of Iraq, where pottery artefacts and statues were seen broken or overturned, while administrative offices were wrecked. Two men were seen hauling an ancient portal out of the building, and empty wooden crates were scattered over the floor. Upstairs rooms seemed to have been spared for the time being. Iraq, among the earliest cradles of civilisation and home to the remains of such ancient Mesopotamian cities as Babylon, Ur and Nineveh, has one of the richest archaeological heritages in the world. The museum housed a major collection of antiquities, including a 4,000-year-old silver harp from Ur. International cultural organisations had urged that the archeological heritage of Iraq, one of the cradles of civilisation, be spared ahead of the US-led war launched on March 20.
http://www.abc.net.au/
Looters grab priceless objects from Iraqi museums
BY AARON DAVIS AND DREW BROWN Knight Ridder Newspapers
BAGHDAD, Iraq - (KRT) - Gold and silver from ancient royal tombs, a priceless harp from 2,600 B.C., a solid bronze bust of King Naram- Sin. These and countless other artifacts from the collective birthplace of Christianity, Judaism and Islam were left defenseless Friday as Iraq descended into chaos. At the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad, where a tank shell had blackened the museum's ornate facade, Baghdadis came and went through the night by firelight, cradling loot. Broken pottery and overturned statues lined the museum's ground floor and two men were seen carrying off an ancient portal. In Mosul, considered by Iraqis the country's most civilized city, home to Iraq's equivalent of Harvard University, gangs stormed a museum storeroom containing ancient Assyrian and Babylonian stone tablets. A curator held them off, at least temporarily. As news of looting spread Friday, some archaeologists lashed out at the military for not better protecting artifacts from the cradle of civilization. Especially important is Baghdad's national museum, central repository of Iraq's greatest cultural treasures. "They've known the importance of this museum, I showed them where it was. There's no reason this should be looted," said McGuire Gibson of the University of Chicago, one of the world's top Mesopotamia scholars. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Charles Owens, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command, said he was unaware of any damage to museums. "We haven't targeted anything, nor are we firing at these precious sites," Owens said. Saving artifacts and quelling looting could not yet be the military's highest priority, he added. "We are doing our best to protect our forces. We are still engaged with people who want to kill us." Late Friday, military officials said they could not determine whether U.S. forces were in control of the area around the national museum or whether the looting of it had been serious. Gibson, who has traveled more than 30 times to Iraq, said he met repeatedly in January with Pentagon officials to map Iraq's museum and excavation sites. The meetings were to assure that the sites were spared from coalition bombing. Post-war looting was always the bigger concern, Gibson and others said. Seven of Iraq's 12 regional museums were looted and 4,000 artifacts stolen during the lapse of authority that followed the 1991 Gulf War. Before the bombing began this time, Gibson said, Iraqi officials moved nearly every artifact that could be safely carried from museums and storerooms around the country to the museum in Baghdad. The museum is the largest and most modern in the Middle East. Thousands of the museum's artifacts were wrapped and placed in storage before the war, Gibson said. Some may have been placed in underground vaults. In 1991, Saddam used vaults of Baghdad's Central Bank for safekeeping the artifacts. The protection has proven porous, however. Even under Saddam's tight rule, many of Iraq's treasures turned up on the black market. "I fully expect to see some of these looted items show up on eBay in coming weeks," Gibson said. It may never be known what artifacts have been lost. "If the records are destroyed, we won't know they ever existed at all," said David Shillingford, a director at the Art Loss Register in New York, which maintains a worldwide database of missing and stolen art and artifacts.
--- (Davis reported from Washington, Brown from Baghdad. Knight Ridder Newspapers correspondents Mark McDonald in Mosul, Iraq, and Jessica Guynn at the Pentagon contributed to this report.)
------- Forwarded message follows ------- Date sent: Fri, 11 Apr 2003 17:50:10 +0100 (BST) From: P Boylan P.Boylan@city.ac.uk
Subject: Iraq - Threats to Cultural Heritage: Guardian article,10th April and THES 11th April 2003
Three articles for information.
Patrick Boylan
P.S. The BBC Radio news is reporting that the Bagdhad National Museum is at the present moment being "ransacked" and emptied of its collections by looters. Canadian Radio news this morning claimed that the National Museum of Natural History has been set on fire.
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THE GUARDIAN EDUCATION
US lobby could threaten Iraqi heritage
Donald MacLeod Thursday April 10, 2003
Apparent lobbying by American art dealers to dismantle Iraq's strict export laws has heightened fears about the looting of the country's antiquities as order breaks down in the last stages of the war.
After the last gulf war a lot of treasures disappeared onto the black market and archaeologists in Britain and the US are concerned this will be repeated on a much larger scale in the power vacuum after the fall of Saddam Hussein, as happened in Afghanistan. For poor Iraqis the temptation to sell stolen antiquities will be greatly increased if it is known there is a ready market in the west.
Iraq, which encompasses Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilisation, is so rich in remains dating back 10,000 years that it has been described as one vast archaeological site.
Dominque Collon, assistant keeper in the department of the ancient near east at the British Museum, said today that alarm bells had been set ringing by reports of a meeting between a coalition of antiquities collectors and arts lawyers, calling itself the American Council for Cultural Policy (ACCP), with US defence and state department officials before the start of the war. The group offered help in preserving Iraq's invaluable archaeological collections, but archaeologists fear there is a hidden agenda to ease the way for exports post-Saddam.
The ACCP's treasurer, William Pearlstein, has described Iraq's laws as "retentionist", and the group includes influential dealers who favour a relaxation of the current tight restrictions on the ownership and export of antiquities.
Dr Collon said: "This is just the sort of thing that will encourage looting. Once there is American blessing they have got a market for these antiquities and it becomes open season. The last thing we want is condoned looting."
The ACCP denied accusations of wanting to change Iraq's treatment of antiquities and said at the January meeting they offered post-war technical and financial assistance and conservation support.
This week an international group of archaeologists petitioned the UN and Unesco, a cultural education body, to ensure that whatever body oversees post-war Iraq takes steps to preserve its priceless heritage from destruction and looting. They urge that security personnel be posted throughout Iraq at its many archaeological sites and museum storage facilities as soon as possible to halt future thefts. "In the aftermath of the previous gulf war, Iraqi archaeological sites and museum collections suffered from extensive looting, the fruits of which continue to disappear into the international black market for illegally procured antiquities," they say.
The archaeologists and scholars want their Iraqi colleagues to continue in or be restored to their positions in museums, archaeological projects, and universities.
The Iraqi antiquities authority should be offered the assistance of specialists from around the world to begin restoration and preservation of antiquities that have been damaged and the training of a new generation of Iraqi experts.
They add: "Whatever body oversees post-war Iraq [should] be ready to offer material assistance to the Iraqi authorities and any concerned international agency prepared to apprehend and prosecute persons responsible for the theft and purchase of Iraqi cultural heritage materials, and to strive for the recovery of those materials and their restoration to the Iraqi people".
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TIMES HIGHER EDUCATIONAL SUPPLEMENT
Alarm bells over future of Iraqi treasures
Phil Baty Published: 11 April 2003
Academics fear that Iraq's cultural heritage is in danger as an influential group of American antiquities collectors manoeuvre for influence with the planned postwar military regime. International archaeologists and historians have criticised the activities of the American Council for Cultural Policy, which has held meetings with the Pentagon and the US Defense Department about the fate of Iraqi antiquities during and after the war.
UK and US scholars said the ACCP's remit to protect the interests of US collectors and dealers was "diametrically opposed to scholarly research".
They said that any form of collecting created a lucrative market that encouraged looting and illegal trade in antiquities, destroying the archeological and scientific value of artefacts.
"There is bound to be looting of archaeological sites and museums in the period after war," said Lord Renfrew, professor of archaeology at Cambridge University. "We must guard against the selling-off of Iraqi heritage."
The ACCP, which has offered financial and technical support to the planned post-Saddam regime in Iraq, denied that it had any interest in Iraq other than to protect its rich heritage.
Its critics claimed that the group was seeking to have US laws relaxed to make it easier for dealers to trade in foreign artefacts illegally removed from countries such as Iraq.
The ACCP said it had no policy on US law, but some of its members - including its president, New York lawyer Ashton Hawkins - have criticised US law that recently led to the conviction of a leading dealer for handling stolen property.
Critics also pointed out that the group's treasurer, lawyer William Pearlstein, has criticised Iraqi laws that forbid the export of antiquities and has reportedly said he would like the postwar regime to allow some exports.
Law professor Patty Gerstenblith, a member of the Archeological Institute of America, claimed that the ACCP's goal was to "weaken the laws of the US so that illegally exported and looted objects can be brought into the US and so that dealers and others cannot be prosecuted for handling certain types of stolen archaeological objects". She said that any move to relax laws in Iraq could lead to the legalised plundering of Iraq's heritage.
Lord Renfrew said that it might be time to ask questions in Parliament to clarify the intentions of the ACCP in the postwar regime.
McGuire Gibson, an archaeologist at the University of Chicago who attended the ACCP's meetings with US officials at the Pentagon in January, was also concerned. He said he objected in principle to the ACCP's activities.
"Collecting and dealing in antiquities are diametrically opposed to scholarly research. Any artefact is best left in place... 80 per cent or more of what the object could tell you is lost when it its ripped out of the original context."
Mr Pearlstein told The THES this week: "The American Council has never tried to reform either American or foreign law."
He said he had spoken in a private capacity about Iraq's laws and stressed that the group was "not a dealer group" and represented legitimate collectors.
Mr Hawkins confirmed that the ACCP had concerns about the application of US law, but he said he was more concerned about the wider constitutional implications of the law than about protecting the interests of collectors and dealers.
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TIMES HIGHER EDUCATIONAL SUPPLEMENT
Say 'no' to Iraqi loot
Colin Renfrew Published: 11 April 2003
Any attempt to relax the laws on the trade of artefacts must be resisted, says Colin Renfrew. Iraq is one of the most archaeologically significant countries in the world. The earliest urban civilisation and the earliest known writing emerged in the land between the Tigris and Euphrates. And in the hills of Iraq we have some of the earliest farming sites, going back to 7000BC.
Successive Iraqi regimes, including Saddam Hussein's, have been proud of their antiquities and have enacted strict laws to protect them. The country's archaeologists and its antiquities service are well regarded.
In the next few weeks, it seems inevitable that some Iraqi archaeological sites and museums will stand the risk of being looted. Such acts can happen in any country where civil government breaks down. It was a concern during the previous Gulf war, when some museums in northern Iraq were looted and the remnants of Assyrian palace reliefs came on the market in London. But there is another threat. There are some who want to see the relaxation of US laws restricting the import of archaeological artefacts, based on a free-trade ethic to make antiquities more available worldwide. There has even been talk of trying to get Iraqi laws loosened after the regime is changed. Iraqi law does sound severe, declaring that antiquities found in the soil of Iraq are the property of the government. That's not how we run things in the UK or in the US. But similar laws are enforced in Greece, Turkey and Egypt, and there is no reason why Iraq should not continue to have legislation of that kind.
We do not know the US administration's position on this issue. But the interim government must make every effort to keep Iraq's antiquities in Iraq. Any move to make it easier for their export would, in my opinion, amount to the legalisation of looting.
Today, if you want to conduct a dig in most countries, you apply to the culture minister for a permit. All your finds are given over to the state.
What you get is the chance to publish your findings and to increase knowledge, not the opportunity run off with any antiquities.
I find it astonishing that in the US you can divide museums into two groups. Some, such as the University Museum of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, do not buy unprovenanced antiquities. Others, however, simply do not ask where an artefact came from so they can say they never "knowingly" buy such looted antiquities.
If Iraqi laws were relaxed, it would make it easier for antiquities to be exported legally. One fears it would also allow looted antiquities from illicit and secret excavations to leave the country more freely.
This would almost certainly lead to a greater scale of looting and to some of the bigger museums or private collectors claiming that this material could come into their ownership legally. If you have a law that says some antiquities can leave legally, you do not have a clear distinction. In the resulting flow of finds from Iraq, it would become much easier to break the law by exporting major antiquities.
I am hopeful that when serious people really think the issue through, they will see how outrageous it is that collectors encourage the looting process by buying illicit pieces. The money they pay goes to fuel the process and keep people digging and destroying the sites.
The loss of knowledge is not simply in the fact that the pieces themselves leave the country - it is in the fact that sites are destroyed to supply those pieces.
The worst scenario is almost unthinkable. I think highly of the professionalism of US archaeologists and academics, and I do not believe that they would countenance this. And there is every hope that organisations such as Unesco would make a great fuss should there be any moves towards relaxing Iraqi law.
But there is a fear that some misguided Dr Strangelove character in the US government will take this rather deluded nonsense seriously and be unwise enough not to gain professional opinion from senior US archaeologists. If that happened, it would present a shocking example to the rest of the world.
Lord Renfrew is professor of archaeology at the University of Cambridge and director of the Illicit Antiquities Research Centre.
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Mosul descends into chaos as even museum is looted
Luke Harding in Mosul Saturday April 12, 2003 The Guardian
By the time Asif Mohammed turned up for work yesterday morning, the ancient contents of Mosul's museum had vanished. The looters knew what they were looking for, and in less than 10 minutes had walked off with several million dollars worth of Parthian sculpture. The 2,000-year-old statue of King Saqnatroq II - one of Iraq's forgotten monarchs - had disappeared from its cabinet. Lying on the glass- strewn floor were the remains of several mythical birds and an Athenian goddess, apparently broken by the looters as they made their escape. "Iraq has a great history," Mr Mohammed, the museum's curator, said yesterday, just hours after Mosul, Iraq's third largest city was officially "liberated". "It's just been wrecked. I'm extremely angry. We used to have American and British tourists who visited this museum. I want to know whether the Americans accept this." It was a good question. Unfortunately, as Mosul descended yesterday into a hellish self-feeding chaos, there were no American troops to ask. The Pentagon had earlier promised that thousands of its soldiers would secure Mosul - a pleasant city of 1 million on the banks of the Tigris - and prevent the kind of mass looting seen elsewhere in Iraq. They would also keep out the Kurds. Since the embarrassing invasion of Kirkuk two days ago by Kurdish peshmerga, the White House had been keen to reassure the world - and Turkey in particular - that it was in charge of northern Iraq. The Kurds would do nothing without US supervision, Washington soothed Ankara. Yesterday it was abundantly clear this was not true. A quick tour of central Mosul revealed there were no American troops there at all. Several thousand were stationed just down the road in Irbil, inside Kurdish-northern Iraq, but they had failed to arrive. The Iraqi government abandoned Mosul late on Thursday night. Just as in Kirkuk, Iraqi soldiers garrisoned in the city took off their uniforms and simply drifted away. Overnight American special forces entered briefly with groups of Kurdish peshmerga. The Americans then disappeared. By midday yesterday - as Kalashnikov fire echoed around Mosul's looted central bank - they still hadn't come back. A huge crowd was trying to help itself to piles of Iraqi dinar. Fights were breaking out. Kurdish fighters were shooting wildly into the air. Nearby, looters were ransacking Mosul's former seat of power, its imposing governorate building, sending glass cascading into the street. However, last night a US special operations team met Mosul's tribal and community leaders in an attempt to put an end to the unrest. Colonel Walter Meyer told the group that US soldiers were being redeployed there from the Kurdish cities of Arbil, Dohuk and Akra. Across the city fires burned from ruined government offices. "I beg you to stop these terrible things," Mufti Mohammed, one of Mosul's leading Sunni clerics, said yesterday, as dozens of worshippers, furious at the self-destruction of their city, poured out of his mosque after Friday prayers. "If some kind of order is not restored in the next 24 hours we're going to take things into our own hands. We will start up our own armed groups to keep the peace." Mr Mohammed said he had persuaded the Fedayeen and Arab volunteers still in the city not to fight coalition soldiers. Now he wished he hadn't bothered. "This is anarchy," he said. Other residents were angry. "Why don't the American troops enter this city? I've spent all morning looking for them," said Ali Sahif, a 34- year-old engineering student. "Everything is being ripped apart." Mr Sahif said looters had wrecked his engineering institute, as well as Mosul University, the hospital and the College of Medicine. He now wasn't sure what to do. Most of the murals of Saddam, meanwhile, had not been damaged or defaced. Perhaps people wanted him back, or at least the stability he represented. Either way, three days after the fall of Baghdad, it was clear that the honeymoon between the Iraqi people and their British and American liberators was turning sour. Mosul has traditionally been one of Iraq's most ethnically mixed cities. Arabs, Syriac people, Armenians, Kurds, Turkomans, Christians and Yazedis -an esoteric Muslim sect who refuse to wear blue - all call Mosul home. But in the end it was Kurdish fighters who poured into Mosul yesterday, to an enthusiastic welcome from the city's Kurds, but a more muted one from everyone else. Their presence in Mosul and Kirkuk has not pleased Turkey, now incandescent at the prospect of a vast de facto Kurdish state on its doorstep. The fighters from the Irbil- based Kurdistan Democratic party had been given orders to defend several key buildings, including the Mosul Museum, with its priceless Assyrian antiquities. They didn't manage to get there in time, although they did secure the natural history museum a short walk away. A Kurdish com mander, Wahid Majid, proudly showed me the dusty toucans and pickled reptiles he had just saved from the mob. The museum's stuffed brown bear was still safely in its display case, he pointed out. "We have not allowed anybody to take anything. We were told to defend the museum and other important establishments." Had he seen the Americans? "They were here earlier but they were unable to control the situation so they left," he said. On the other bank of the Tigris, looters were demolishing Mosul's only five-star hotel, the ziggurat-shaped Nineveh International. It was perhaps a legitimate target: until yesterday an entire wing had been reserved for senior members of the Ba'ath party. Most ordinary Iraqis were too scruffy to venture inside, let alone afford its £16-a-night rooms. Yesterday they removed all the hotel's bedding and furniture instead. "It is our money. It is our money," 17-year-old Hassan Ali explained. "This hotel has been built with money from Iraq's oil. The oil belongs to us. That's why we are looting." To begin with, the mass collective stealing was good-humoured and democratic, with all of Mosul's different groups taking part. But as dusk set in, the beginnings of what looked like ethnic collapse were all too apparent as Kurds and Arabs wrangled about who owned what. Iraq is a large country with ancient fault lines. Unless coalition forces began to restore order it is in danger of disintegrating. Back at the Mosul Museum, Mr Mohammed sat next to two giant Assyrian winged friezes, similar to a pair in the British Museum, themselves looted by 19th- century British archaeologists from nearby Nineveh. The friezes had clearly been too heavy for anybody to cart off. "I watched Kofi Annan appear on TV," he said. "He said that Iraq had a very great history and civilisation. I'm very sad at what has happened here. I feel pain in my heart." Mr Mohammed recalled that he had had his photo taken with an elderly American tourist who visited. What did he think of Americans now? "I think George Bush and Tony Blair are war criminals."
Govt objects to tests on remains
Thursday 10 April 2003, 6:05 AM
Australia will formally protest to Britain over its museums' ongoing experimentation on the remains of indigenous Australians. An Aboriginal delegation that brought back the remains of 60 indigenous people from the Royal College of Surgeons' collection said it had evidence that an enormous amount of experimentation on remains was continuing. The delegation said it was told at London's Museum of Natural History this week that dentists were continuing to analyse its collection of human remains. "Scientific investigations on Aboriginal ancestral remains and biological tissue is still continuing today," delegation head Bob Weatherall said.
"The barbaric practice still continues; it has to stop."
Indigenous Affairs Minister Philip Ruddock described the past British practice of taking Aboriginal bodies for scientific examination and experimentation as obscene. "In terms of the issue of continuing experimentation, I must say I think it is more the exception than the rule," Mr Ruddock said. "But I will take the matter up formally with my (British) counterpart to make known the concern that exists here if there continues to be experimentation on remains." The skeletal remains of 60 Australians placed for storage in the National Museum in Canberra brings to 750 the number of bodies repatriated from the United Kingdom. ATSIC chairman Geoff Clark used the occasion to take a swipe at the federal government's 1998 amendments to the Native Title Act.
He said when the bodies were stolen in the early years of colonisation, Aborigines still controlled their land.
ATSIC Media Release: Return of ancestral remains from London heralds many more returns
9/4/2003 - "They have been absent for a century or more, the remains are not complete, but now at least their spirits have returned," said ATSIC Commissioner Rodney Dillon today at a welcoming ceremony in Canberra for the remains of some 60 Aboriginal people returned to Australia from the Royal College of Surgeons in London.
"The trade in our remains was once vigorous and prolonged-it happened within the memory of people still alive," the Commissioner said. "There were those who made a living from taking our remains. Our graves were robbed. Some of us were murdered to order. "Imagine how the spirits of those returned must now feel, their graves violated, their people dispersed and dispossessed over the period of their absence. "And what would they think of the country they're returning to, where their descendants are still second class citizens and their traditional lands continue to be degraded and desecrated? "Today is a happy occasion, but repatriations such as this also stir up powerful emotions. They remind us of the profound sadness underlying many Indigenous lives." ATSIC Chairman, Geoff Clark, and the Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Philip Ruddock, also spoke at the welcoming ceremony. "Some of our ancestors have come home and the healing of our communities can begin," Mr Clark said.
"Once it was thought acceptable to send my people's remains as 'specimens' to the other side of the world to museums and medical organisations for so-called scientific research. "These practices were not just insensitive but barbaric, and, not before time, overseas and Australian institutions are now starting to make amends." The remains received in Canberra are principally of the Yorta Yorta (Victoria-New South Wales) and Ngarrindjeri (South Australia) peoples. Their repatriation was arranged by Brisbane organisation the Foundation for Aboriginal and Islander Research Action (FAIRA) which received a grant from ATSIC. FAIRA representative Mr Bob Weatherall accompanied two traditional custodians, Mr Major Sumner (Ngarrindjeri) and Mr Henry Atkinson (Yorta Yorta) on the journey back to Australia. "I congratulate the custodians who have fulfilled their obligations to their ancestors," Mr Clark said. "The remains will be kept at the National Museum of Australia until their final journey home to their communities of origin." Commissioner Dillon, Chair of the Board's Culture, Rights and Justice Committee, has for many years been an active advocate of repatriation. He said he was hopeful this return would be followed by many more. "ATSIC is now working with the Commonwealth and other agencies to take advantage of changing attitudes overseas," the Commissioner said. "In July 2000 our Prime Minister signed a communiqué with the British Prime Minister committing their two governments to cooperation on repatriation.
"A working group reviewing current museum legislation is expected to report to the UK Parliament next month. We hope this report will recommend the necessary changes to legislation to allow our ancestors to be released from public collecting institutions. "In anticipation of this, the Ministerial Council for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs has supported the holding of a national workshop to develop cooperative arrangements between agencies and communities involved in repatriation," the Commissioner said. Commissioner Dillon also thanked the Minister for "his presence and sensitive words at this welcoming home ceremony today". "Mr Ruddock understands the importance of repatriation for my community.
"However, it is not always recognised that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities want to stay in control of the repatriation of their ancestors. "Communities don't always need to have the process completed quickly, but in a manner which allows the custodians to make the important decisions about how their ancestors will be returned to their country. "We remain injured and incomplete while our ancestors are locked up in museum cupboards or basements far away. Sensitive repatriation will go a long way towards healing the hurts of the past and will assist our people to heal themselves."
Source: www.atsic.gov.au