Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

This debate on the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict (Hague Convention) Bill 2016 is important in and of itself. It also raises several issues about our role in conflict, however. While I support the Bill, I will consider tabling amendments to it on Committee Stage. I am also concerned about the motivation behind this Bill and why the Government is introducing it now. There is no question about how good it is that we should sign up to a convention where we commit to protecting humanity’s cultural and artistic heritage from destruction in war. However, when the Minister set out the case for supporting this legislation, not surprisingly, he referred to Palmyra and recent events in Syria. Of course, those events should be mentioned. Any discussion of the destruction of cultural artefacts and heritage in conflict could not but include mention of the appalling scenes we saw of Daesh deliberately destroying an absolutely irreplaceable part of humanity's cultural heritage in Syria. We witnessed the remains of one of the great ancient civilisations being systematically destroyed.

What is incredible is that the Minister only referred to what happened to the Arch of Triumph in Palmyra. That is a pretty extraordinary one-sidedness when we are debating the rationale behind signing up to a convention about the protection of cultural property. Why would the Minister not talk about the destruction of the National Museum of Iraq and the damage done to ancient site of Babylon during the US-led war in Iraq? According to those people and organisations charged with the protection of humanity's cultural heritage, the worst act, bar one, of cultural destruction and vandalism was the destruction of the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad and the damage done to the ancient site of Babylon, one of the most ancient locations of early human civilisation, during the US-led war in Iraq. At these sites, there were three different fires. Ancient documents were looted and burned. Contamination and destruction were visited up on the ancient heritage site of Babylon. The latter was done explicitly by the US forces which, incredibly, used that site as their military headquarters during 2003. All of this happened, despite warnings from universities and organisations - in the US itself and other countries - representatives from which with Pentagon officials on several occasions before the war was launched. These individuals pleaded with the American authorities to do nothing that would lead to the destruction of that heritage site and the museum and cause irreversible damage to our human heritage.

The Pentagon ignored them and did absolutely nothing to protect the Baghdad museum, even though they were pre-warned. It is not as if this just happened and they were not warned in advance. They were warned again and again that this was going to happen if they went ahead with their planned invasion and bombing without taking some measures - setting aside the debate about the war itself - in terms of having specific measures to protect that heritage but they ignored those warnings. Donald Rumsfeld who was questioned about this at the time after the first looting began, completely dismissed it. They maintained the military base on the Babylon site and then handed it over to the Polish forces afterwards. They used the soil and sand there, which was packed with archaeological artefacts, for sandbags for the US soldiers, which they set up around the site. They brought in diggers and tractors, dug up the ground, contaminated the site and removed soil containing artefacts which will never be recovered. The Baghdad national museum was completely looted.

I will tell the Leas-Cheann Comhairle something even worse about all this. At the time all the serious and respectable cultural institutions and universities met collectors, museum directors and so on who were lobbying the Pentagon prior to the war. If the Minister remembers back to 2003, as anti-war activists our biggest concern was about the human destruction that was going to be visited on the population of Iraq but we also warned, as did many, about the cultural destruction that would take place in one of the most ancient civilisations in the world bar none. At the time another small group called The American Council for Cultural Property was founded in late 2002. That group, which had very close contacts with the Bush Administration, started lobbying the Administration for a different approach to the cultural property that might fall into US hands when the war started and it said that as soon as they got into Iraq, they should relax the laws on the collection, export, sale and the putting into the market of artefacts, documents, heritages pieces and that might fall into US military hands. When the Baghdad museum was looted - although some of looting was done by common thieves and some of it involved Iraqi people who were trying to protect their heritage and took artefacts away until after the conflict - the reports were clear subsequently that much of what went on involved people who were organised and who knew exactly what they were looking for and that such artefacts found their way into the market and were sold for profit. This had been well organised in advance by outside forces. We can put those two things together, namely, the failure of the Bush Administration, despite warnings, and the military forces under its auspices to protect these artefacts and then an organised theft of much of those artefacts taking place. Nobody stopped them and this was at the time that the world was screaming about what was happening. When the first looting started Rumsfeld and his gang said there was nothing to see there. It was only weeks later that they eventually put in some tokenistic protections when the horse had already bolted, the destruction and fires had happened and all the looting had taken place. I will tell the Minister what I believe. I believe our friends, The American Council for Cultural Property, founded months before the invasion in late 2002 and with close contacts with the Bush Administration, had a well-organised plan, which was facilitated - or at least a blind eye was turned deliberately - by the US forces. Is that not what they went on to do to the rest of the country - to its resources and its oil? They went in to loot the country and, of course, most importantly, kill 1 million people while they were doing it. I find it amazing that the Minister did not mention this.

I would also mention in passing what Israel has done in Gaza. Does the Minister know how many mosques were destroyed by Israel in Gaza during its recent assaults? A total of 203 mosques were attacked during Operation Protective Edge, 73 were completely destroyed and two churches were also extremely badly damaged. These include, for example, the Al-Omari Mosque in Jabaliya, Gaza's oldest and largest mosque built in the seventh century and named after the second caliph, Umar bin Al-Khattab. It dates back to 649 AD, making it 1,365 years old and it was totally destroyed by Israel. The time available does not permit me to go through the rest of them on the list but systematic deliberate destruction of ancient Palestinian heritage, and also human heritage, part of the ancient civilisations of this area, took place.

I wonder why the Minister does not mentioned these matters. They are recent events. Why do we not talk about that? Why do we talk only about Palmyra and the crimes of ISIS, which, of course, must be mentioned and roundly condemned? I suspect, like everything else, that we are completely one-sided in our apparent concern about these matters. When one side that is deemed to be the enemy, the adversary or the problem engages in such destruction, we will condemn it but when our allies do it, we keep shtum, even when they are signatories of this convention. The US signed the first protocol. Israel is probably not a signatory, I am not sure about that - the Minister can probably confirm that - but the United States certainly is a signatory. Why does the Minister not mention those matters? I suspect it is because there are two different standards, particularly when it is applies to the United States.

This brings me on to another point I want to make. I welcome the fact that the Minister or Fianna Fáil are supporting the Hague Convention-----

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