Cambodia struggles to save its rich heritage from illegal trade

Helen Jessup, a scholar and author of books about Cambodia's cultural heritage, says new roads and the clearance of heavily mined parts of the country, for instance, have opened up new areas to plunder.

She adds that even some well-known Cambodian sites have suffered in recent years despite being policed.

She says, however, that she is optimistic about the impact of methods such as the Red List, provided the leaflets get to the right people. They certainly help customs agents and border inspectors, she says.

The information should also reach tourists and other potential customers, she adds. Then the honest guys would be forewarned, she says.

Hab Touch says an earlier watch list released in 1993, which focused on 100 specific looted items, resulted in the return of 10 of them. Those pieces are now on display in the National Museum.

Hab Touch says the authorities plan to publish a revised book of items that are known to be missing once they have collated sufficient documentation to prove ownership.

But the recovery of stolen artifacts gives only a limited insight into the extent of the problem. Gauging its scale is an impossible task since the trade is by nature an underground activity.

The illicit trade in archeological artifacts is driven by the high prices commanded by items such as stone and bronze heads, particularly in the context of the country's endemic poverty.

One paper written by a Heritage Watch researcher four years ago analyzed more than 300 Khmer artifacts auctioned at Sotheby's in New York. It found that the offer prices ranged from 7,500 dollars to almost 30,000 dollars each.

Around 80 percent of the pieces had no known provenance, raising suspicions that they were stolen.

Heritage Watch's O'Reilly says domestic and regional buyers account for most of the illicit demand for Khmer antiquities. It is because many items are small, easy to smuggle and hard to identify as ancient that the Red List may prove so useful, he says.

But the experts agree that a single document cannot counteract the demand for stolen Khmer artifacts. Given Cambodia's poverty, its inability to protect many of its ancient sites and its porous borders, the plunder of its cultural heritage is likely to continue.

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