History
Heritage Watch was established following the rampant looting of Phum Snay, an immense Iron Age burial ground in Cambodia’s northwest. After its discovery in 1999, Phum Snay was destroyed by looters seeking its rich grave offerings—beautiful ceramics, iron weapons and gold and bronze jewelry. Rescue excavations were conducted at the site, but 90% of it was already lost. Realizing that an entire chapter of Cambodia’s history was disappearing, a group of archaeologists made it their mission to promote the protection of the country’s heritage. To better achieve this goal, Heritage Watch was founded.
Heritage Watch’s Board of Directors includes international leaders in the field of Southeast Asian studies. The organization has frequently been featured in both the national and the international media, including The Times, The Associated Press, The BBC, and in a documentary on the U.S. Public Broadcasting Station. It has twice been the recipient of the U.S. Ambassador’s Fund for Cultural Heritage, and has also received awards from UNESCO, Friends of Khmer Culture, Lonely Planet Publications, and number private organizations and donors.
In its first few years of operations, Heritage Watch has accomplished a great deal. With generous funding from the U.S. Department of State, it launched a national public awareness campaign targeting both those who loot and buy antiquities. Heritage Watch attacked the supply end of the trade through informative radio and television commercials, educational comic books, and community workshops for villagers in heavily looted areas and the establishment of a telephone hot-line. Tourists were informed about the negative consequences of buying looted art through public exhibits, airport kiosks, and public lectures.
Read more about this topic: Heritage Watch
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“All history and art are against us, but we still expect happiness in love.”
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“the future is simply nothing at all. Nothing has happened to the present by becoming past except that fresh slices of existence have been added to the total history of the world. The past is thus as real as the present.”
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