SIEM REAP JOURNAL
By JANE PERLEZ
March 21, 2005
The New York Times
SIEM REAP, Cambodia - Hidden among stands of bamboo far from the throngs of
tourists who clamber over the grand temples of Angkor, a series of
bas-reliefs in rose and gray sandstone stand in solitary splendor.
The gods and demons and half-human, half-animal figures revered by the
Angkor civilization were carved at Mount Kulen by anonymous artists and,
like countless other artworks, disappeared into nature when the empire
collapsed 500 years ago.
Now, like much else at Angkor, the carvings are symbols not only of the
mystique of the past but also of the greed of the present.
In the past six months, a head of one of the figures was gouged from the
rock, said Sin Sokhorn, a Cambodian guide who often comes to the site by
motorcycle. A scar in the rock marked the place where looters had hacked at
the statue, leaving a crumpled, headless torso.
The head was probably on display in an antiquities shop in Bangkok or in a
European city with a handsome price tag, he mused. Or, he suggested, it
could be in a private collection of Angkor art, secure from prying eyes.
"We need protection from the looters, but where are we to get it?" asked Mr.
Sin Sokhorn as he showed the bas-reliefs.
One of the astonishing aspects of the Angkor sites is their diminished
nature at the hand of modern man. Amid the grandeur, empty pedestals,
headless carvings and missing lintels cast an aura of indelible loss.
The sudden cascade of tourists - one million foreign visitors came to
Cambodia last year, a vast majority to Angkor - brings many risks:
overcrowding, dwindling of the scant local water supply, a cheapening
atmosphere.
But the relentless looting strikes at the very artistic and cultural value
of one of the world's most admired ancient civilizations, art historians
say.
"There is not a single site that is not affected," said Helen Jessup, the
founder of Friends of Khmer Culture, an American nongovernmental group. "The
Western collectors continue to be as guilty as those who do this."
The art of Angkor, created between the 9th and the 15th centuries in the
empire centered around this town in northern Cambodia, has been the target
of occupiers and looters since French explorers rediscovered the city in the
mid-19th century.
Drawings of the period show large statues strapped to rafts and protected by
armed Frenchmen as they floated down rivers on their way to Paris. In the
1920's, as a young writer, André Malraux, who later became France's minister
of culture, was convicted in an Indochina court for stealing priceless
figures from one of the most beautiful temples, Banteay Srei. He was
sentenced to three years in prison but never served any time.
Cambodia's recent violent history provided an almost ideal opportunity for
plundering. The Communist Khmer Rouge destroyed temples and written records,
while the occupying Vietnamese Army, well aware of the value of Angkor art
in the West, removed pieces by the truckload.
The peace of the 1990's brought some help, but not enough, say scholars and
others concerned with the protection of Angkor art.
Apsara, the Cambodian government agency responsible for the protection and
management of Angkor, runs a force of gray uniformed guards who patrol the
main temples. Their presence has helped dampen looting at Angkor Wat, the
central temple, Cambodian officials say.
But in a recent statement, Apsara acknowledged that it was fighting an
uphill battle against armed gangs using chain saws and motorcycle brake
wire, one of the latest tools for quietly slicing through artifacts. The
agency suggested that the Cambodian Army was involved in the destruction.
"Vandalism has multiplied at a phenomenal rate," the agency said. "Employing
local populations to carry out the actual thefts, heavily armed
intermediaries transport objects, often in tanks or armored personnel
carriers, often for sale across the Thai border."
Out of desperation, many objects have been deliberately removed and placed
in safekeeping at the Angkor Conservation Office, a row of buildings set
behind a high fence here in Siem Reap.
In the padlocked rooms, a visitor can see row upon row of the heads of
demons, gods, snakes, lions and Buddhas. In one corner, a prized stele
inscribed in Sanskrit and listing the wealth of the Ta Prohm monastery
stands without any special marker amid a jumble of other artifacts.
A former Cambodian ambassador to the United States, Roland Eng, who recently
returned home, said his country was doing its best to protect the Angkor
treasures. But he said there were two severe limitations: Cambodia's
rock-bottom economy and the exorbitant prices for Angkor art on the
international market.
"The country remains very poor, the army is very poor," Mr. Eng said. "There
is a high demand for Angkor antiquities. We have to encourage people not to
buy any antiques where they cannot trace the source."
He was pleased, he said, that in 2003 the State Department and Cambodia
signed a Unesco convention, known as the Cultural Property Implementation
Act, that outlaws in the United States the import or export of illicit
Cambodian cultural artifacts. The accord has already helped curtail the
illegal trade.
"Fewer objects have become available at auction, and the quality has
declined," Ms. Jessup said.
Even so, Ms. Jessup, the curator of a show of Khmer art at the National
Gallery of Art in Washington in 1997, said she remained alarmed at the
persistence of the pillaging. Her group is organizing an inventory of the
thousands of Angkor-era works in storage at provincial museums and police
barracks in Cambodia. If those pieces are stolen and re-emerge on the art
market, she said, it will be easier to establish their provenance.
Meanwhile, the destruction continues at a startling rate.
At Angkor Thom, for example, a 12th-century ruler, Jayavarman VII, built a
highly fortified city with five causeways, each one lined with figures of
benign gods and fierce demons. After many of the heads were chopped off by
looters, the authorities replaced them with concrete copies.
"Even some of those have been taken," Ms. Jessup said.