Staff Report
2011-03-02
PARIS – UNESCO is marking the 10th anniversary of the Taliban’s destruction of the Buddhist Bamiyan statues with scholarly meetings and a statement calling for protection of the world's cultural heritage.
UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova called on governments, educators and media to raise awareness of international treaties preserving artifacts and banning looting, smuggling and illicit trade in artifacts in a March 1 statement.
UNESCO held a Bamiyan commemorative forum in Paris March 2, and the 9th Bamiyan Expert Working Group (EWG) will discuss ways to preserve the Bamiyan ruins March 3 and 4.
UNESCO does not favour rebuilding the statues.
"The destruction, that of the Buddhas, was very inhuman ... the Taliban painted a very dark picture of itself in that particular region of the country, which had both ethnic and cultural diversity," Afghan journalist Lotfullah Najafizada told Central Asia Online.
The Taliban began destroying the Buddhas March 2, 2001.
Source,
http://centralasiaonline.com/cocoon/caii/xhtml/en_GB/newsbriefs/caii/newsbriefs/2011/03/02/newsbrief-07
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