Silent World Heritage Day .. Culture is "closed" globally until further notice

Unusually quiet and silent, the World Heritage Day approved by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) came after the tampering with and destroying archaeological sites and the absence of efforts to revive and protect them, and did not witness activities to revive it globally.

Contrary to its health and economic consequences, the Corona pandemic has surprisingly and dramatically affected the arts and cultural heritage sectors, and the health crisis has led to the closure of most cultural institutions, museums and human heritage sites from March of this year, or radically curtailed its activities with only some virtual and electronic activities. 

In conjunction with the World Heritage Day, workers in the museums and archaeological sites sector are increasingly losing their jobs, it is not clear when the reopening of archeology and heritage sites will take place, and it is not known when cultural institutions will resume their activities in most parts of the world, and in the Arab world it is not possible to reach at this time most of the heritage sites The human.

Global closure
. Germany, Italy, Spain, and other European countries have closed museums and archaeological sites as part of measures to reduce mass gatherings in public places. In Egypt, all museums and archaeological sites have been closed to the public for sterilization starting on March 23, and it is not known exactly whether they are available. Currently, Qatar's museums are closed from March 12, and art galleries have been postponed. 

Documentation and collection institutions - such as libraries, archives, and museums - have started various documentation programs, and in the Netherlands the National Organization for the Digital Heritage Sector launched a campaign to ensure documenting and preserving community changes related to the pandemic time, and the Oral History Recording Platform via the Internet launched an interactive project to build a "voice map of empty city records" .

The pandemic severely affected the restoration of archaeological sites, and the new Corona cathedral, one year after its famous fire, was disrupted by the emerging Corona virus.

On April 15, 2019, a fire broke out in the building of the world-famous cathedral, which was built in 1163 AD, and is considered one of the best examples of French Gothic architecture, a symbol of France, and it was not damaged despite wars and other variables for 857 years.

Over the centuries, the cathedral hosted the coronation ceremonies of the kings of France, and its popularity flourished globally shortly after the publication of Victor Hugo's novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame in 1831. The fire caused the collapse of a 93-meter-high cathedral tower, in addition to completely collapsing its roof, as well as other damages .

The restoration work was to start with the dismantling of scaffolding that was around the cathedral before the fire for periodic restoration work. Although French President Emmanuel Macron has expressed his desire to complete the restoration work within 5 years, archaeologists see this as very difficult, according to Anatolia. 

Warmth and destruction
Despite the global and tourist warmliness of archaeological sites, many of them have been subjected to destruction, looting and vandalism in recent years, especially in the countries of the Middle East, some of whose effects are living in dark ages that destroy their features that have remained steadfast for thousands of years.

Recently, US President Donald Trump threatened - at the height of the escalation with Iran in the aftermath of the killing of the Iranian officer, Qasim Soleimani - that his country might target 52 sites in Iran, including sites that are important to Iranian culture, and the reactions that condemned it took place, considering that bombing cultural and historical sites is a "war crime" According to the 1954 Hague Treaty.  

The Hague Agreement came in response to the devastation caused by the Second World War to human heritage sites, and the war has destroyed many cultural treasures by the Allies and the Axis. The agreement expressed the desire of the international community to spare the world cultural heritage from the scourge of wars, and to recognize that the loss of this heritage represents a loss for the target country and humanity as well.

But that does not mean that armies and military groups have stopped targeting the human heritage. Recently, the world witnessed brutal destruction and plundering of historical heritage in Syria and the former Yugoslavia, eastern Europe, Afghanistan, Iraq, Cambodia, Mali and many countries rich in historical relics.

In the post-World War decades, the old city council building in Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital - the peak of the Austrian-Hungarian architecture of Bosnia inspired by Islamic architecture - was burned down during the Serbian aggression and bombing of Sarajevo between 1992 and 1995.

Bamiyan Buddha statues were also destroyed in Afghanistan in 2001, and the Janjwiper Mosque in Timbuktu in Mali was damaged, and the Great Mosque of Aleppo (the Umayyad of Aleppo) and the Temple of Baal in Palmyra, Syria, suffered great damage in recent years.

These and other cases highlighted how the destruction of cultural heritage could become just a tool of warfare to target the memories, history and identity of a people. In fact, the intentional destruction of cultural heritage is often used for this purpose completely, that is, the surveying of the past and its absence in a people so that a new history can be written.

Cultural heritage is being attacked around the world in times of conflict and war. During the cultural revolution of Chinese leader Mao Zedong, thousands of Chinese historical sites were destroyed to rid the country of capitalist and traditional influences; during World War II the old Polish city of Warsaw was destroyed during the Warsaw Uprising 1944 The German offensive and air strikes targeted both residential areas and historical monuments.