Buddhas of Angkor Under Threat from Looting

John Gittings in Siem Reap
The Guardian Unlimited

August 28, 2001

There is the sound of chanting at the gate of Ta Som temple. Workers
are carrying out a heavy figure on two crossed poles.

It is
neither a corpse nor a tourist to Angkor who has slipped on the ruins.
It is a 12th-century Buddha with folded hands, meditating on the coils
of a naga—a cobra whose several heads protect him from the
sun and rain.

The Buddha is lifted into a pick-up truck. Local people have tied prayer scarves on the rope by which it is hoisted. They study the statue respectfully before it is removed to conservation headquarters in the town of Siem Reap.

"It was only discovered yesterday," an excited temple guardian explains. "Now they must take it away quickly before someone steals it. For the robbers, it is worth a new house and several new cars."

"You came at the right time to see the Buddha," says a moto-cab driver. "It will bring you good fortune!"

For eight centuries, this Buddha had lain undisturbed a couple of meters below ground level, in the sanctuary of Ta Som. It remained undisturbed when the temple was used as a field hospital by the Khmer Rouge soldiers who occupied Angkor in the 1980s. Only excavation has exposed it to danger.

Need for Greater Security

Proper security for Angkor was one of the conditions set by UNESCO when it listed the area as a World Heritage Site in 1992. But after 20 years, abandoned to war and the forest, Angkor was in such a desperate state that UNESCO reversed its usual procedure and allowed the conditions to be satisfied after, not before, listing the site.

The Angkor archaeological park's force of nearly 300 French-trained "heritage police" was not fully established until two years ago. "We are trying to teach the villagers to understand the value of heritage," says the deputy commissioner, Sin Sinareth.

Everyone agrees that UNESCO's support came at a critical time and may have saved Angkor from being torn apart. But security, like everything else in this operation, is a relative concept.

"Nowadays we only lose a few things," says an official of Apsara, the Cambodian management authority for Angkor and the Siem Reap region. "We still lose something every day, but it's better than elsewhere in the country."

In Phnom Penh, Cambodian archaeologist Son Soubert is more pessimistic. "The police are very forceful, but they are not enough," he says.

In recent years, the Khmer Rouge units in the area have been demobilized. Some of the soldiers are now "heritage police." But elements of the national Cambodian army that fought against them remain at two important sites in the park.

The Khmer Rouge smashed Buddhist statues and modern wats (monasteries), but mostly left the temples alone. The worst damage happened later, when the land mines were cleared and looters moved in.

"Everyone wants to get involved in Angkor, particularly the military," says professor Son Soubert. "The root of the problem is the big shot, not the small soldier. They will not let Apsara have full authority."

King Sihanouk has denounced those who "dismantle and mutilate our ancient temples and monuments," including government officials, the "so-called 'honorable' buyers [of] ... the civilized world," and Cambodia's "insincere patriot soldiers."

Profitable "Business"

A visit to the hill of Phnom Bok, one of Angkor's earliest sacred sites, is instructive. The graded earth road leading to it has subsided into water-filled ravines.

The source of the road damage soon becomes clear. The army is still camped at the foot of Phnom Bok, but it is now into a much more profitable business.

Excavators scoop the red laterite earth—used since Angkorian times for building works—into a succession of heavy trucks, which then plow down the road. The hill where a four-meter-high royal lingam (sacred stone phallus) once stood is being eaten away from the side.

Hardly anyone ventures to Phnom Bok, but every tourist visits the great temple of Angkor Wat. The temple mountain of the Bayon, with its huge smiling faces peering from high above and its 1,200 meters of action-packed bas-reliefs, is also on everyone's list. And anyone with an extra day heads out to the mini-temple at Banteay Srei—still out of bounds only a few years ago because of the presence of the Khmer Rouge.

The numbers tell a familiar story. In 1998 Apsara registered just over 40,000 foreign tourists; the number doubled in 1999 to 83,000 and again last year to 171,000. Cambodian visitors may add another hundred thousand.

"I'm afraid of our lack of capacity to manage tourist development," says Ang Choulean, an anthropologist who heads Apsara's department of culture. "Our main concern should be to preserve Angkor as a living site with its customs."

Angkor is still far more relaxed than most big-name sites in global tourism. Many of its sites are almost deserted, and almost everywhere visitors can scramble on the ruins with ease. Yet projections of increased tourism and the rise of new hotels in Siem Reap make it clear the low level of activity cannot last and the "living" Angkor is already under threat.

Keiko Miura, who is researching the impact of tourism, criticizes the heritage police for preventing local people from cultivating the park's resin trees and grazing water buffalo in the moat and on the banks of Angkor Wat.

She also accuses the police of extracting money from "vendors of souvenirs or drinks, caretakers of religious statues, beggars, or rice cultivators." Sinareth admits that his park police are underpaid.

UNESCO officials praise a plan to run electric shuttles between the sites, but complain that it is being delayed on the ground. It is being held up because the local moto-cab and motorbike drivers object to losing their jobs. Even in French colonial times, Angkor was a significant source of employment.

Thousands of displaced people have been relocated to Siem Reap since the civil war. Most earn no more than the equivalent of two to three dollars a day. "We need a policy," insists Ang Choulean, "to help the local people benefit from tourist income."

None of these problems can detract from the profound aesthetic and cultural attractions of Angkor, whose appeal is enhanced by clean air and green forest.

One encouraging sign is the growing number of Cambodian tourists, who travel in lively groups in the back of pick-up trucks. There are complaints that they have turned the sacred site of Phnom Kulen into a picnic spot. But they also burn incense at Angkor's Buddhist wats, which have long connections with local villages.

The wonder is that the Cambodian people have survived their fractured past at all, and Angkor with it.

2001 Guardian Newspapers Limited