Mr. Houshang Seyhoun (b. August 22, 1920 in Tehran, Iran to May 26, 2014 in Vancouver, British Colombia, Canada) has passed away in exile. He was an Iranian architect, sculptor, painter and professor. He studied fine arts at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and earned a degree in architecture from University of Tehran.  Mr. Seyhoon became famous for his design work in the 1950s in Iran including Tehran’s Central Railway Station and tombs of scientific, literary and historical figures.

Examples of some of his work.

It has been reported as published by the Washington Post (and the Denver Post), that the government of Egypt sees the fight against the illegal sales of antiquities and looting a major national emergency.

In March, Mohamed Ibrahim Ali, Egypt’s minister of state for antiquities was in WashingtonDC talking with Obama administration. He stated that the looting worries the experts. “The objects that are stolen from museums are easier to track because they are registered,” Ibrahim said, referring to the archaeological artifacts taken from Egypt’s MalawiNationalMuseum and EgyptianMuseum in Cairo, many of which have been identified and returned. However, a bigger problem now has become the illicit digging everywhere spanning acres of land, which is also the work of sophisticated traffickers.

As we have discussed here at WCHV, looting isn’t a new phenomenon, but as countries face conflict, looting adds to many more problems that the country face. Today, more than three years since the Egyptian revolution, looting antiquities is a major concern for a country that is so dependent on tourism. In the last decade, many factors including higher antiquities prices and easier transport across the world has made looting a profitable option for many smugglers and thieves.

Late last week, the news from Ecuador that a freight ship carrying 60,000 liters of oil has become stranded off the coast of the Galapagos Islands after running aground brought back painful memories of 2001 for environmentalists. The Ecuadoran vessel became stranded off the coast of the island San Cristobal last week, however an inspection by the authorities has been reported and shows that at this time the oil was not at risk of spilling from the tanker.

The reports also have stated that contingency plans were being made to mitigate the potential catastrophic impacts of a spill should that situation arise. The vessel is believed to be carrying around 16,000 gallons (60,000 liters) of diesel and crude oil.

The nearby Galapagos national park has made a statement that it is monitoring the situation and that the coastguard is coordinating efforts to offload some of the cargo of the ship in the hope that a high tide will lift it from the rocks. Situated in the Pacific Ocean some 1,000 km from the South American continent, the Galapagos islands and the surrounding marine reserve have been called a unique “living museum and showcase of evolution” as stated by the UNESCO.

In 2001, another oil tanker ran aground, but the resulting leak of around 180,000 gallons of oil was estimated to have killed around 62% of the marine iguana population on a neighboring island.

About a week ago, a Japanese whaling fleet left port under tight security in the first hunt since the UN’s top court ordered Tokyo to stop killing whales in the Antarctic.

The international Court of Justice had ruled that Japan had misrepresented the hunting in Japan’s Southern Ocean expedition as a scientific research activity while it was actually a commercial one. Four ships departed from the fishing town of Ayukawa in the northeast, marking this season’s start to a coastal whaling programme not covered by the International Court of Justice’s landmark ruling.

In the last several weeks, Japanese politicians have criticized the ruling and the international public opinion as cultural imperialism by the West. There is also local pressure from inside Japan in favor of annual hunting, expressing fears that the court’s decision could ultimately ruin many peoples’ livelihoods in Japan. A recent poll also shows that 60 percent of Japanese people support the country’s whaling program, but only 14 percent eat whale meat.

When Tokyo called off the 2014-15 season for its Antarctic hunt, the country proposed to redesign the controversial whaling mission in order to make it more scientific. Japan has continuously battled for its right to hunt which has put the country face to face with anti-whaling nations like Australia, which brought the case to the international court, arguing that Tokyo’s research was aimed at skirting a ban on commercial whaling. At the same time, Japan has hunted whales under a loophole in a 1986 global moratorium that has allowed it to conduct lethal research on the mammals, but has openly admitted that their meat somehow made it to dinner tables.

Tokyo has always maintained that the whale population was large enough to sustain commercial hunting. In the 19th century, both Japan and the US hunted whales extensively as they were a source of fuel and food.

Late last week, the news came from Iran that the historic Baha’i cemetery in Shiraz, Iran is being destroyed. The reports indicate that workers for the Revolutionary Guards had already completed an excavation in the old cemetery that is believed to have disturbed many graves as reported by several groups. There have been reports that several appeals have been made to the authorities in Shiraz but the city authorities have made plans for constructing a building on the site.

The cemetery is owned and used by the Baha’is in Shiraz since early 1900s. However, after the Iranian revolution, the site was confiscated in 1983. In that year, the government destroyed the main building at the site and all the grave markers. It has been reported that there were over 950 Baha’s buried in the cemetery including many who were killed in 1983 and a group of ten Baha’I women.

Since 1983, over 42 Baha’i –owned cemeteries have been destroyed in Iran and many Baha’is have been prosecuted and executed.

The Belgian director, Emmanuel de Merode of the famed national park, Virunga in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) was shot and wounded in an ambush about two weeks ago. Mr. de Merode was taken to a hospital immediately and was operated on. A few days later, he was in stable but critical condition and was transferred to a hospital in Nairobi, Kenya.

It has been reported that Emmanuel de Merode’s vehicle came under fire by unidentified armed men as he was travelling from the eastern city of Goma to the town of Rumangabo. Mr. De Merode was shot in the stomach and legs four times as reported by BBC. Goma is about 50km (30 miles) from Rumangabo, the headquarters of Virunga National Park.

Some of eastern DRC’s numerous armed groups are based in the park and since 1996 more than 130 park rangers have been killed in Virunga. Virunga National Park is home to the mountain gorillas and has been listed a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

It is believed that Mr. De Merode’s work attracted him a lot of enemies. BBC also reported that Mr. De Merode had attended a meeting with a state prosecutor in Goma discussuing proposed oil explorations in Virunga before he was shot. It has been reported that he handed the prosecutor sensitive information about oil exploration at Virunga.

UK-based oil firm Soco International is exploring for oil at Virunga, despite strong criticism from environmental organizations. The firm however, has condemned the attack on Mr. De Merode and has also denied any involvement.

The Virunga Park is home to about 200 of the world’s 790 remaining mountain gorillas and it is one of the most ecologically diverse places on Earth

UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register is a list of library collections and archive holdings of world significance. This is an international initiative launched in 1992 to safeguard the documentary heritage of humanity against neglect, damage, the ravages of time and climatic conditions, and willful and deliberate destruction.

The five books were proposed recently by the Iranian National Commission for UNESCO, the National Library and Archives of Iran (NLAI).

The five books include The Bustan (The Orchard) and the Gulistan (The Rose Garden) of Persian poet Sadi (c. 1213-1291), inscribed by the 14th century calligrapher Ahmad Shirazi and preserved in the National Library and Archives of Iran.

A copy of Masnavi-ye Manavi, the magnum opus of the Persian mystic and poet Molana Jalal ad-Din Rumi (1207-1273) is the second document/book.

The third document is Abu Is’haq Ibrahim ibn Muhammad al-Farisi al-Istakhri’s “Kitab al-masalik wa-al-mamalik” (Book of Roads and Kingdoms) dating back to the 10th century. The Persian translation of the book is being preserved in the National Museum of Iran. However, the original text is being kept in a library in Germany and the book has been jointly proposed by Iran and Germany to UNESCO.

A rare copy of “Al-abnia ‘an haqaeq al-adwia” written by the 12th century writer Abu Mansur Mowaffaq Heravi is the fourth book.

The fifth document is Safarnama (travelogue) by the 11th century Persian poet Nasir Khusraw, he concluded.

When creating the Memory of the World Register, UNESCO realized the need to protect such fragile yet important component of cultural heritage of the world. This list was established with the aim of preserving and digitizing humanity’s documentary heritage.

Latin American author Gabriel Garcia Marquez passed away on Thursday April 17. Garcia Marquez was born in 1927 on the Colombian coast and was the master of a style known as magic realism, and his novels were filled with miraculous and enchanting events and characters; love and madness; wars, politics, dreams and death.

Marquez won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1982. In his acceptance speech he spoke about Latin America’s wars, military coups, dictatorships and ethnocide: “We, the inventors of tales, who will believe anything, feel entitled to believe that it is not yet too late to engage in the creation of … a new and sweeping utopia of life, where no one will be able to decide for others how they die, where love will prove true and happiness be possible, and where the races condemned to one hundred years of solitude will have, at last and forever, a second opportunity on earth.”

Chilean novelist Ariel Dorfman says the speech was one of the author’s most important messages to the world.”(in his speech) Garcia Marquez is speaking about all the people who are marginal to history, who have not had a voice.” Dorfman said.

Marquez was 87. He had learned that he had lymphatic cancer in 1999, and it is believed that he had been suffering from senile dementia since 2012.

On the eleventh of April, some supporters of the Islamic government in a hostile demonstration objected to the request by Richard Frye to be buried in the historic city of Isfahan, Iran. These demonstrators claimed that Frye was a US spy and should not be allowed to buried in Iran.

As the demonstrations were happening in Isfahan, the government’s publications actually reflected on the protests and expressed support for them. These demonstrators who also have a publication named the “revolutionary youth” stated that they will attempt to demolish Pope’s tomb. In fact, it looks like that at the same time, his tomb was vandalized and paint was used to write all over his beautiful tomb.

Arthur Upham Pope(1881–1969) was best known as a pioneering American expert on Persian/Iranian art and the editor of the authoritative Survey of Persian Art. He was also a university professor of philosophy and aesthetics, archaeologist, photographer, political activist, museum director and planner, pianist, interior designer, and founder of an international scholarly organization. Both Pope and his wife Phyllis Ackerman are buried in Isfahan, Iran.

Many reports from Iran show the outrage by other Iranian youth groups who love Persian culture and history and in their own way have been protesting the action of these government supported protestors in Iran in weblogs, and Heritage Sites. They strictly and adamantly express their outrage in these actions and state that these protests in Isfahan do not represent the opinions and thoughts of millions of Iranians who have supported and preserved professor Pope’s tomb in Iran and also support eventual burial of professor Frye in Iran.

Here is a video of Dr. Frye discussing his wishes.