Cultural heritage is a fundamental part of our humanity, helping to establish our senses of self, place and belonging in and to our particular communities, nations, and civilizations. Cultural heritage helps construct and represent our identities, histories, and memories and, in so doing, shows and symbolises how we consider and understand both ourselves and others.
However, cultural heritage presents many politically, economically, socially, religiously, and culturally fraught challenges, making it difficult to attempt to resolve to whom and where cultural heritage belongs. For instance, who owns cultural heritage? The government, the State, a particular community, group, or an individual? Does it belong to the whole of humanity and can anyone actually own cultural heritage? Perhaps one is only a steward of cultural heritage, managing, maintaining, and preserving it for future generations?
Further, where does cultural heritage belong? Does it belong to the place where it originated? Or where it migrated, or was taken to? Who determines its place of belonging? Does a government or State from which the object was taken decide (even if that government or State did not exist at the time of its removal)?
According to Ertugrul Gunay, the former Turkish minister of culture, “each and every antiquity in any part of the world should eventually go back to its homeland”. Is this national claim to cultural heritage legitimate? Similar claims on the national identity of cultural heritage objects – for example, Greece’s claim to the Elgin Marbles in England’s British Museum – form the basis of many states’ cultural property laws that are used to try to reclaim these objects that are abroad.
These complicated questions necessarily engender ambiguous and contested responses. But perhaps an even trickier question is who has a responsibility to protect cultural heritage? The government, the State, the group or community, the individual? Humanity? What happens when those who claim responsibility, or who are considered responsible, do not or cannot protect it? What happens when those who claim responsibility, or who are considered responsible, either deliberately or inadvertently destroy or neglect it?
When cultural heritage is threatened, it means that we are threatened since it represents threats to our identities, histories, and memories
Ultimately, it is us – humanity – who bear a responsibility to protect cultural heritage. When cultural heritage is threatened, it means that we are threatened since it represents threats to our identities, histories, and memories.
It is unsurprising that, oftentimes, when people or societies are targeted or entangled in situations of war, terrorism, persecution, and other conflicts, their cultural heritage is also targeted. The destruction of cultural heritage usually aligns with the destruction of entire communities, nations, civilizations, and their people, and vice versa.
Both ancient and recent history are tarnished with these repugnant atrocities and, sadly, the contemporary world is not spared them either.
One of the current and most reprehensible cases of cultural heritage destruction is that being carried out by the militant Islamic State (IS) in the Iraqi and Syrian regions under its brutal occupation. IS is willfully committing unspeakable horrors against anyone who does not subscribe to their apocalyptic version of Islam. It is simultaneously engaged in the widespread destruction of cultural heritage that it deems idolatrous, sacrilegious, and un-Islamic. Their insidious aim is to obliterate this region’s rich history, purge its multicultural identities, and erase its diverse memories.
For example, since seizing Syria’s ancient city of Palmyra, an Unesco World Heritage site, IS has destroyed many of its historically significant artifacts, temples, and monuments in one of the world’s most renowned archeological sites. This ongoing destruction has reached staggering levels representing irreversible losses to both Syrian and world heritage, not to mention future archeological, academic, and scientific scholarship and research.
Responding to these atrocities, the Louvre in Paris, France stated that it “marks a new stage in the violence and horror, because all of humanity’s memory is being targeted in this region that was the cradle of civilisation, the written word, and history”.
UNESCO’s Director-General Irina Bokova said that “this destruction is a new war crime and an immense loss for the Syrian people and for humanity. Daesh is killing people and destroying sites, but cannot silence history and will ultimately fail to erase this great culture from the memory of the world”.
She has appealed to the world to protect this cultural heritage, stating that “extremists seek to destroy this diversity and richness, and I call on the international community to stand united against this persistent cultural cleansing”. The world must stand united in its condemnation of this cultural heritage destruction and embark on a committed campaign to help protect it.
But this concern for cultural heritage does not diminish or distract from the horrible loss of human lives. Indeed, together, they are unified atrocities attempting to eliminate both whole peoples and their identities, histories, and memories.
The destruction of cultural heritage and people might at first seem to be different things; however, the distinction is not as clear or neat as it may appear. People can be harmed in diverse ways; targeting their physical bodies, and their lives, are only two, albeit serious, ways. Targeting their minds, imaginations, and psychological and emotional states are other ways.
According to Zainab Bahrani, a Columbia University archaeologist, cultural heritage destruction is not only about objects, it is also about “people’s right to exist, their right to live in their homeland. You destroy people’s history by destroying their monuments and artifacts. It’s similar to having the Athenian acropolis destroyed, or thugs going to Versailles and blowing up the whole palace.”
When learning of IS’s demolitions in Palmyra, the writer Tarek Fateh said that “part of me died today”. Such a sentiment is not merely metaphorical; it is also meant in a literal sense insofar as we, as human beings, are connected together by cultural heritage. The destruction of cultural heritage is an assault on these important psychological and emotional aspects of humanity.
Caring about humanity involves not only protecting physical bodies, but also minds, imaginations, and psychological and emotional states. What matters is not only how many people live but also how they live. This kind of caring includes those aspects of cultural heritage that speak to more than our important needs for food, shelter, physical welfare, and good health.
Caring about how people live also means caring about achievements that transcend our own lives. When IS destroys cultural heritage, it is not simply attacking objects, but attacking the identities, histories, and memories they represent. Thus, IS is killingpeople by taking their lives and destroying their identities, histories, and memories, not to mention denying people the right to live as they see fit.
Another vexing question is how can or should cultural heritage be protected? Despite nearly universal condemnations of their atrocities against cultural heritage, the international community seems powerless to prevent IS’s reign of terror.
One way to help protect cultural heritage is through the establishment and support of memory institutions – like libraries, archives, galleries, and museums – that collect, curate, manage, protect, and preserve cultural heritage. Although they have limitations, steps are being taken to protect cultural heritage by these memory institutions and their allies in universities, governments, non-profit organisations, and the public around the world.
If we are to make any claims on our humanity, we must protect our shared cultural heritage in order to help save ourselves from the errors and terrors of intolerance, prejudice, xenophobia, and persecution of our fellow human beings.
Marc Kosciejew is head of department and lecturer in library, information, and archive sciences at the University of Malta.