When cultural heritage becomes cannon fodder

Regardless of their causes, the results of armed conflicts always tend to be the same: they lead to appalling loss of civilian life, mass displacement, and violations of international humanitarian law and human rights. One of the embodiments of this last consequence is the destruction of cultural heritage, in order to demoralize, humiliate and often completely eradicate the opponent. Agreements to respect cultural heritage and infrastructure have once again been violated in the war in Ukraine, and the conflict has again highlighted the challenges that still need to be addressed in this regard.

The first international seminar of the Pau Casals Chair in Music and the Defence of Peace and Human Rights, created by the Pau Casals Foundation and the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), to stimulate new research, knowledge, dissemination and debate around the musical and humanistic facets of Pau Casals and his legacy, as well as the values he advocated throughout his life, will reflect on this issue on 27 October.

Erasing the imprint of a community

More than 150 cultural sites have been partially or totally destroyed in Ukraine as a result of the fighting that has taken place since the beginning of the Russian offensive against the country. Seventy religious buildings, 30 historical buildings, 18 cultural centres, 15 monuments, 12 museums and 7 libraries have been damaged, according to the latest report by UNESCO. This is one of the innumerable brutal aspects of the concept of total war, which has direct consequences on heritage, and which humanity has witnessed on countless occasions in the past. Examples of these violations during the conflict in the Balkans (1991), against the Buddhas of Bamiyan (2001), during the war in Iraq (2003) and more recently in Syria (2011) are vivid collective memories.

"The primary objective of cultural cleansing is clearly to destroy the cultural heritage of the opponent or the opposing ethnic group", according to Jan Hladik, the UNESCO programme specialist. "This destruction is often also facilitated by geographical proximity and shared knowledge of places and cultural heritage, as well as the opponent's culture", he added. Alfonso Martinell, emeritus professor of the University of Girona (UdG) and honorary co-director of the UNESCO Chair in Cultural Policies and Cooperation of the UdG, said that these types of activities clearly reinforce the arguments of George Steiner and Walter Benjamin, who said that culture is not exempt from barbarism, and these violations aim to prevent future generations from being able to recover their collective memory. "Memory is a human attitude involving wanting to know where we come from and what happened", said Martinell, who pointed out that it is essential "for constructing my personality, my present and, above all, for constructing futures".

Although it has taken place throughout history, the destruction of cultural heritage has become even more devastating since the advent of aerial bombing and long-range weapons. The First World War led to the destruction of a vast quantity of cultural heritage in Rheims, Louvain and Arras, among other places, but the Second World War was even more traumatic, due to the regular bombings, the pillage of cultural heritage from occupied territories and, of course, the geographical extent and duration of the conflict.

Many important lessons have been learned since the Second World War, such as "the need to take preparatory measures in peacetime to protect cultural heritage, such as creating and regularly updating inventories of movable and immovable cultural heritage; training armies to respect cultural heritage; including penalties for crimes against cultural heritage in penal codes, and prosecuting people who have committed or ordered crimes against cultural heritage", summarized Hladik.

These arguments culminated in the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, according to which cultural heritage is considered the property of humanity, and this agreement is today the framework of reference in this area. "It's essential to protect cultural property because it's not only the heritage of a specific group, or of a nation – although they often want to identify with it and its destruction is a means to harm the enemy – but rather of humanity as a whole. Even if it was merely the private property of each culture, it would also have to be preserved in accordance with a principle of respect and tolerance. But it's much more than that, it's a permanent legacy of everyone's shared experience", argued the historian Joan Fuster-Sobrepere, the dean of the UOC's Faculty of Arts and Humanities and the co-director of the Pau Casals Chair, summarizing the underlying concept that guides the text. "Each culture and each legacy from the past is unique, and mustn't be sacrificed as a result of the quarrels of one generation", he added.

Debts and challenges related to the protection of heritage

In this context, how can international solidarity be fostered and the collective response to ensure the protection of heritage be improved? According to Hladik, most of the work in this area involves raising awareness among the population.

Fuster-Sobrepere agrees: "It's important to highlight the value of the 1954 Declaration, and increase knowledge of it. We must raise people's awareness of the values of respect and tolerance, and promote the culture of peace and people's cultural rights. We need firm opposition to supremacist ideas, and we need to prevent them from growing within our societies", he argued. "It's impossible to be very optimistic about the possibility of rules and boundaries being respected in a war, but ultimately public opinion needs to know about these rules for respect and to mobilize to enforce them", he added.

"Apart from conventions, agreements, and international law, there's the entire population's awareness that this is something which needs to be looked after and protected", concluded Martinell in the same vein. "We believe that the Pau Casals Chair can offer this space for reflection and these proposals for the future".

Seminar: Culture and Heritage in Wartime

27 October, from 10 a.m. to 5.30 p.m.
In the Pati Manning of the Centre d'Estudis i Recursos Culturals - CERC (Carrer Montalegre 7, Barcelona)
Programme: https://www.catedra.paucasals.eu/en/agenda/conference-culture-and-heritage-at-war/

Registration: https://ticketsonline.paucasals.org/muslinkIII/venda/index.jsp?lang=1&nom_cache=MUSEU&property=MUSEU&codiActiv=39

The international experts that will be facilitating this analysis include Jan Hladík, the former secretary of the 1954 Convention, and Isber Sabrine, the Syrian archaeologist and president of Heritage for Peace.