Secretary-General’s message for 2022

Today marks the 15th anniversary of the International Day of Democracy.

Yet across the world, democracy is backsliding.

Civic space is shrinking.

Distrust and disinformation are growing.

And polarization is undermining democratic institutions.

Now is the time to raise the alarm.

Now is the time to reaffirm that democracy, development, and human rights are interdependent and mutually reinforcing.

Now is the time to stand up for the democratic principles of equality, inclusion, and solidarity.

And stand with those who strive to secure the rule of law and promote the full participation in decision-making.

This year, we focus on a cornerstone of democratic societies – free, independent, and pluralistic media.

Attempts to silence journalists are growing more brazen by the day – from verbal assault to online surveillance and legal harassment – especially against women journalists.

Media workers face censorship, detention, physical violence, and even killings – often with impunity.

Such dark paths inevitably lead to instability, injustice and worse.

Without a free press, democracy cannot survive. Without freedom of expression, there is no freedom.

On Democracy Day and every day, let us join forces to secure freedom and protect the rights of all people, everywhere.

António Guterres

INTERNATIONAL DAY OF DEMOCRACY HISTORY

On November 8, 2007, the UN general assembly made September 15th the International Day of Democracy. The assembly invited individuals and organizations to commemorate the day. It also called on governments to share experiences of promoting democracy. The first International Day of Democracy was celebrated in 2008 by 46 national parliaments. This date marked the 20th anniversary of the first International Conference of New or Restored Democracies.

Hidden for decades, a mosaic that is a “key part of Rome’s history” was located and returned to the Italian government, the Federal Bureau of Investigations said in a news release on Friday.

In 2020, an attorney contacted the FBI Art Crime Team on behalf of an anonymous client who was in possession of an enormous “mosaic of the mythological figure Medusa,” the FBI said.

The mosaic had been cut into 16 pieces, each weighing between 75 to 200 pounds, and had been individually stored in pallets kept inside a Los Angeles storage unit since the 1980s, according to the FBI.

“The client had no documentation — known in the art world as provenance — so they could not sell the pieces,” the FBI wrote. “Selling art without provenance is the equivalent of trying to sell a car when you don’t have its title.”

It is unclear how the anonymous client came into possession of the artwork, or how long it had been in the US, although the FBI says, “it may have been lost for as long as 100 years.”

Two special agents — Elizabeth Rivas and Allen Grove — worked to discover the origin of the mosaic so that it could be returned to its rightful owners.

Italian police force confirmed the mosaic was Italian and had “been entered into cultural property records in 1909,” the FBI said. “The only modern record of the mosaic’s existence was a 1959 newspaper ad that appeared to show it for sale in the Los Angeles area.”

“The mosaic was handcrafted from an age where people put an amazing amount of care and effort into it. It really speaks to the ingenuity and creativity of the time,” Grove said. “It’s not meant to be in Los Angeles. The mosaic belongs to the people of Rome. It allows us to understand a bit about the history of humans 2,000 years ago.”

Officials from Italy traveled to Los Angeles to inspect the mosaic and help plan the best way to get it back to Rome.

To ensure the artifact arrived in Italy without damage, the anonymous client covered the costs of the specialized shipping crates that were then sent through diplomatic channels. The artwork arrived safely in April, the FBI confirmed.

Art experts in Italy are currently in the process of cleaning and restoring the mosaic. While some of the storing pallets had been infested with termites, the artwork pieces were “largely intact thanks to the climate-controlled facility they’d been kept in,” the FBI said.

There is an ongoing effort in the US to repatriate cultural artifacts being sold, often illegally, to private collectors or museums.

Dozens of ancient artifacts investigators believe to have been looted were seized from the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. Officials have also returned stolen antiquities worth nearly $14 million to Italy in July, including dozens of artifacts seized from US billionaire Michael Steinhardt.

In 2021, the Met returned three African art objects, including a pair of 16th-century Benin brass plaques, to Nigeria. The move came after European museums started facing mounting pressure to return the irreplaceable artifacts plundered during colonial times.

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I recently read a news report by one of the Iranian news agencies, under the title “Mashq Square’s doors will be opened after 19 years.” As the news reports suggest, Ali Darabi, the Deputy Minister of Cultural Heritage of the Islamic Republic of Iran, has suggested that the project related to Mashq Square that started a few years ago is nearing its final stage. In the first decade or two after the Islamic Revolution, I, like other culture and history enthusiasts and advocates, have been extremely worried about the destruction of the Iranian cultural and historical heritage in the hands of the new government, which had declared its hostility to the non-religious culture and history of Iranians from the beginning as demonstrated in comments like: “What was before Islam was a tyranny, and what was built after Islam with the efforts of the kings, especially the Pahlavi kings, is worthless.”

I have been directly involved in related issues, advocating for preservation and conservation of Iran’s cultural heritage for many years. I am also concerned about the other programs that this anti-culture Iranian government, under the name of restoration, reconstruction, and plans, have had for historical and non-religious Iranian sites. These restorations, reconstructions, and designs have always resulted in leaving the sites in worse conditions, and at times resulting in the loss of the historical identity of a work or a site or its destruction, which I call “dehistoric-ization.” (My emphasis here is on non-religious heritage sites as the government has always allocated very high budgets and carried the restorations of religious sites correctly.)

Some examples include beautiful sites such as the magnificent Sardar-e Bagh-e Melli, or the “Gate of the National Garden,” which has been called a symbol of Tehran for many years and is a great tourist attraction. After the revolution, many revolutionaries wanted to destroy the buildings at the Parade (Mashq) Square, but they were saved from destruction by the efforts of Iran’s cultural heritage advocates. However, some of its symbols, such as the lion and the sun engraved on the tiles around the buildings, were removed.

Mashq Square, also called the Parade Square, was a military shooting range during the Qajar period, and is now one of the national gardens at the gate of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a historical and governmental complex. Some of the buildings are from the Safavid era, while some of the streets leading to it and its various features were built during the Qajar period and the first Pahlavi period.

Even now, it is not clear what plans the Ministry of Cultural Heritage of the Islamic Republic of Iran has for the square and its historical and beautiful complex. However, I am certain that they will destroy parts of it which they “dislike,” and build a few museums of “Islamic arts” in place of the destroyed buildings. I am not exaggerating, as it is enough to pay attention to the statement of the Deputy Minister of Cultural Heritage in a recent meeting: “Cultural heritage is important in protecting public rights. We are the guardians of the preservation of cultural heritage. At the same time, preserving public rights and solving their problems is evident in our duties.” For the people who are familiar with the insidious language of this anti-culture group, this means: unauthorized excavations, destruction, changing identities, stealing, removing tiles and historical doors and windows, vandalism, and theft and removal of historical objects, all in the name of “rights.” For 43 years, the public has had no rights except to misery and poverty and the destruction of its cultural values.

Earlier today, when I was looking at the photos of the front of the National Garden, one of the remaining works of the Mashq Square in Tehran, with great regret, I noticed some changes which could be the result of previous “repairs.” I hope that I am wrong, as I have not been in Iran for four decades. Those who are there and who pay attention to these things must know better, in order to inform others:

The first photo of the head in the National Garden in Mashq Square: two flags with two lions and two suns

The second photo of the head in the national garden in Mashq Square: two flags without two lions and two suns

Some people make excuses for illegally changing the flag of Iran, but is it possible to find an excuse for changing the historical monuments of a land, which also belong to all of humanity? It is important for us to document the destruction and mutilation of Iranian cultural sites for the record and also with the hope that they may be restored in the future.

August 22, 2022

The International Council of Museums (Icom) has condemned Russia for the “deliberate destruction of Ukrainian cultural heritage” whilst voting to strengthen its Code of Ethics. The comment was made in a statement published on Icom’s website on 19 August, publicising the executive board’s unanimous decision to establish a new ethics protocol. Announced during the Icom General Assembly in Prague this week—the largest gathering of museum professionals in the world—Icom said the revised protocol would allow the organisation to more readily “address conflicts”.

The news comes as Anastasiia Cherednychenko, the vice-chair of Icom Ukraine, claimed that Russia had committed “cultural genocide” in Ukraine and that Icom Russia had subsequently violated Icom’s code of ethics as a result, during a panel discussion at the Prague conference.

After, Icom Ukraine released an open letter addressed to Icom’s president Alberto Garlandini, saying: “Russia is deliberately destroying and robbing Ukrainian museums and moving their collections to Russian territory while Russian Icom members participate in Russia’s manipulative projects that run against the founding principles of Icom.” Icom Ukraine went on to say that the international museum community was “complicit in these violations” if it did not take measures against Icom Russia.

Senior representatives of the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture—led by Cherednychenko—called for Icom Russia to be expelled from the council because of the invasion. A strengthening of the code of ethics is needed in order to do so, the letter adds: “Unfortunately, the rules developed and adopted by all Icom members no longer work. Silently watching the aggressor’s actions or merely expressing concern does not help; moreover, that gives the green light to those who might be tempted to violate the rules in the future. Therefore, we request that Russia’s membership in Icom is terminated.” Since its founding in 1946, Icom has never expelled a national committee.

Icom’s leadership responded by overwhelmingly voting in favour of establishing a new protocol on the ethical code. The review will be “given priority by the Icom Standing Committee for Ethics (Ethcom) immediately following” the conference in Prague, the statement said.

CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND—According to a statement released by the University of Cambridge, friars living in Cambridge during the medieval period were almost twice as likely to be infected with intestinal parasites than the city’s general population. Research team member Tianyi Wang used a microscope to look for surviving parasite eggs in soil samples taken from the areas around the pelvises of people who had been buried in a local parish church cemetery, and from the cemetery at the site of the city’s medieval Augustinian friary. (The remains of monks were identified by the metal belt buckles associated with their order.) The study determined that 58 percent of the monks were infected with worms, compared to 32 percent of the townspeople. Roundworm was the most common parasite detected, but whipworm infection was found as well. Both of these parasites are spread through poor sanitation, Wang explained. Yet most people living at the time were likely to use cesspit toilets, while most Augustinian monasteries were equipped with water-rinsed latrines and handwashing facilities. Team leader Piers Mitchell concluded that the monks may have facilitated infection through using their own feces to fertilize their vegetable gardens, or by purchasing fertilizer that contained human or pig excrement. Read the original scholarly article about this research in the International Journal of Paleopathology.

VILLAHERMOSA, MEXICO—According to a Live Science report, archaeologists in the Mexican state of Tabasco have recovered two circular Olmec reliefs dating to between 900 and 400 B.C. that depict local rulers engaging in a form of ritual contortion. In these rituals, researchers say, practitioners adopted a stance or seating position that reduced oxygen flow to the brain, inducing a trancelike state. The 3-D limestone reliefs, which each measure some four-and-one-half feet in diameter and weigh more than 1,500 pounds, show the rulers grimacing with their mouths open and their arms crossed. In both reliefs, they are surrounded by Olmec motifs associated with elite rulership, maize, and jaguars. The reliefs were initially discovered on private land in 2019 near the town of Tenosique in the southern part of Tabasco and, according to researchers from Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) who were among scholars called in to analyze them, they are similar to contemporaneous examples found elsewhere in the region. Archaeologist Tomás Pérez Suárez of the Center for Mayan Studies at the National Autonomous University of Mexico said that Olmec people of the period are thought to have believed that participating in contortion rituals that led to trancelike states left participants with special powers

On the night of 22 to 23 August 1791, in Saint Domingue, today the Republic of Haiti, saw the beginning of the uprising that would play a crucial role in the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade.

It is against this background that the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition is commemorated on 23 August each year. It was first celebrated in a number of countries, in particular in Haiti (23 August 1998) and Gorée Island in Senegal (23 August 1999).

This International Day is intended to inscribe the tragedy of the slave trade in the memory of all peoples. In accordance with the goals of the intercultural project “The Routes of Enslaved Peoples”, it should offer an opportunity for collective consideration of the historic causes, the methods and the consequences of this tragedy, and for an analysis of the interactions to which it has given rise between Africa, Europe, the Americas and the Caribbean.

A group of cultural heritage specialists and experts from national and world heritage organizations have published an open letter warning about the future of restoration, maintenance, and protection of the most important historical monuments. They specifically point out their concerns regarding the status and work conditions of individuals working on heritage.

According to reports by the Iranian news agencies, national heritage employees consistently receive their salaries late and are worried about their employment status and contracts. Most of them complain about their low salaries, lower than that of ordinary workers.

www.savepasargad.com

Howard Carter discovered the tomb in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings in 1922

The archaeologist who discovered Tutankhamun’s tomb in the early 1900s may have helped himself to some of the Egyptian pharoah’s treasures, new evidence suggests.

Howard Carter found Tutankhamun’s tomb in November 1922, while on a digging expedition in the Valley of the Kings. He wrote in his diary at the time that the chamber was filled with a “wonderful medley of extraordinary and beautiful objects heaped upon one another.”

Now a previously unpublished letter has emerged, which alleges that Mr Carter could have stolen some items from the site.

Mr Carter had shown Sir Alan a “whm amulet”, which had been used for offerings to the dead, and apparently assured him that it had not come from Tutankhamun’s tomb, The Guardian reported.

However Sir Alan was told by the then British director of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo that the amulet matched others found in the tomb and likely had been stolen.

He enclosed the director’s verdict in a letter to Mr Carter. It read: “The whm amulet you showed me has been undoubtedly stolen from the tomb of Tutankhamun.”

In the first five months of this year, international tourism has seen a strong return, with almost 250 million international arrivals recorded, according to the recent UNWTO World Tourism Barometer.

The same source reveals that for a period from January to May 2021, over 77 million arrivals were recorded, which means that the sector has recovered almost half or 46 per cent of the pre-pandemic levels of 2019, SchengenVisaInfo.com reports.

In this regard, the Secretary General of UNWTO, Zurab Pololikashvili, has said that tourism recovery has increased the pace in many parts of the world, facing the challenges that stand in its way.

In addition, he advised being careful about the economic problems and geopolitical challenges that may affect this sector in the remaining part of 2022 and beyond.

“Europe welcomed more than four times as many international arrivals as in the first five months of 2021 (+350 per cent), boosted by strong intra-regional demand and the removal of all travel restrictions in many countries,” the statement issued by the UNWTO reads.

Europe also saw a particularly strong performance in April at +458 per cent, thus reflecting a busy Easter period. Meanwhile, in America, arrivals doubled by +112 per cent. However, the strong rebound is measured against weak results in 2021, while arrivals remain 36 per cent and 40 per cent below 2019 levels in the two regions, respectively.

Other regions that saw strong growth are also the Middle East, with +157 per cent, and Africa, with +156 percent remaining 54 per cent and 50 per cent below 2019 levels, respectively. Asia and the Pacific almost doubled arrivals with +94 per cent. However, the numbers were 90 per cent below 2019, as some borders remained closed to non-essential travel.