Cambodia: Returning the gods

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 12 May 2022

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

While some countries fight to reclaim antiquities that were stolen centuries ago, Cambodian investigators are dealing with far more recent thefts. Many of the country’s prized treasures were taken by looters in the 1980s and 1990s and then sold on to some of the world’s most prestigious museums, including the British Museum and the Victoria & Albert museum, in London. At the centre of many of the sales was a rogue British art dealer. Celia Hatton joins the Cambodian investigative team and gains unprecedented access to looters who have become government witnesses. The Phnom Penh government has now launched a legal campaign in the UK to get some of its most prized statues back. For many Cambodians these are not simply blocks of stone or pieces of metal, they are living spirits and integral to the Khmer identity. The Gods, they say, are cold and lonely in foreign collections and they want to come home. Producer: John Murphy (Image: Monks at Angkor Wat temple, Cambodia. Credit: BBC)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Wow.
0:02.0	Ooh, I don't know what that is.
0:05.0	These dead vines are covered in really sharp thorns.
0:10.0	It's not easy to walk through here.
0:15.0	Oh, and they're hornets too.
0:19.0	I'm Celia Hatton, and this is assignment on the BBC World Service.
0:24.0	We're at the base of a mountain in central Cambodia.
0:27.0	It's blisteringly hot, and I'm following a former Camer-Rooz child soldier.
0:33.0	He's leading me to the remains of an 11th century temple
0:37.0	where he's got a story to tell.
0:40.0	Here it is, in the middle of this thicket of bamboo.
0:45.0	I feel like we've walked into just a surreal scene.
0:48.0	I feel like we're out of a scene from Tomb Raider or the Raiders of the Lost Ark.
0:54.0	We're just among these temple ruins, and we've just stumbled across a beautifully carved piece of stone.
1:02.0	What we think is the base of another statue.
1:04.0	These look like the feet of what's probably a lion at some point.
1:11.0	Like so many others across Cambodia, this temple has been emptied.
1:17.0	Its statues hacked away and removed.
1:20.0	We're here with a team that's looking for evidence of stolen antiquities.
1:24.0	Our guide has a code name, Red Horse.
1:27.0	He used to be part of a gang that looted and sold off ancient statues.
1:32.0	Now he's a government witness.
	...

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