破壊には先輩がいた - Living, Loving, Thinking, Again

承前*1

Haifa Zangana*2 “The barbaric destruction of Iraq’s ancient artefacts is a war crime” http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/27/destruction-iraq-ancient-artefacts-war-crime-islamic-state

Haifa Zanganaさんはクルド系イラク人の作家。ISISによるイラク、モスルの博物館の古代文物破壊を巡って。
ISISの蛮行以前に、イラクの文化財は2003年の米軍の侵略、イラク新政権の腐敗などによって、常に掠奪や破壊の危機に晒されてきた。

But it is a crime that also has to be seen as part of the trajectory of cultural destruction since the invasion of 2003. This is a destruction that aims to erase memory and, above all, collective identity. Those who are responsible for historical destruction, no matter what rhetoric they adopt, must be held to account as war criminals.
Among the crimes Iraqis have witnessed in more than a decade of chaos are the use of ancient heritage sites as US bases. According to Zainab Bahrani, professor of art history and archaeology at Columbia University*3, “These sites include Ur, the legendary birthplace of Abraham; Babylon, the famed capital of Mesopotamian antiquity; and Samara, the Abbasid Islamic imperial city. The digging, bulldozing, filling of sand bags and blast-barricade containers, the building of barracks and digging of trenches into the ancient sites have destroyed thousands of years of archaeological materials, stratiography and historical data.”
The Geneva convention, which states that an occupying army should use all means within its power to protect the cultural heritage of an occupied country, has been defied. This behaviour has given the green light to Iraqi governments, before and after the withdrawal of US forces in 2011, to carry on what seems to many Iraqis to be a mission of destruction.
Archaeological sites have been left without protection and have become easy prey to looting. In October 2010, before the rise of Isis, the Global Heritage Fund*4 listed Nineveh among the top 12 sites in the world most threatened by irreparable loss. Historical artefacts are now sold in international markets: political corruption has swallowed most of the Iraqi budget, leaving nothing for cultural protection and development.