This week, 60 Minutes traveled to Cambodia to report on the looting of historical artifacts from temples throughout the nation and observe their journey to prestigious museums.
Correspondent Anderson Cooper and a staff visited the world-famous Khmer temple Angkor Wat, in addition to a number of different distant temples, to analyze how this decades-long artwork heist was carried out.
”Lots of these temples have been closely looted over a long time, starting within the genocide within the Nineteen Seventies,” Cooper defined in an interview with 60 Minutes Time beyond regulation.
In 1975, the Khmer Rouge, a radical communist group, took over Cambodia. About 2 million Cambodians have been killed or starved to demise beneath the regime.
In 1979, the Khmer Rouge misplaced energy, however the preventing continued for many years. The instability left Cambodia’s temples unprotected and susceptible to plunder that was typically carried out by former Khmer Rouge youngster troopers. Priceless artifacts stolen from these temples would then find yourself within the arms of unscrupulous antiquities sellers.
Brad Gordon, an American lawyer employed by the Cambodian authorities to trace down and return these treasures, calls them ”blood antiquities.” The commerce in looted antiquities was a harmful one which led to violence and homicide.
”Individuals have been killed over these antiquities,” he stated. ”At any time when I see a statue, I believe, ’Who died to get this out of the bottom, or get it out of a temple, and to maneuver it right here?'”
Gordon took Cooper and 60 Minutes to a distant temple on Sandak Mountain, some of the closely looted websites in Cambodia.
”It is like one thing out of an Indiana Jones movie,” Cooper stated. ”It is a crumbled temple…and it is utterly in a forest. It is overgrown.”
Cooper stated indicators of looting have been throughout. Pedestals the place statues as soon as stood littered the bottom. The severed ft of statues remained the place they have been hacked off from the physique.
Throughout their investigation, Gordon and his staff realized that Sandak Mountain might have been looted for a particular motive. Archaeologists and students found from transcriptions that big quantities of gold had been delivered to the temple.
A breakthrough got here when Gordon met a former Khmer Rouge youngster soldier, Toek Tik, who was codenamed ”Lion” for his security. He described discovering a whole lot of jars scattered all through the positioning crammed with jewellery like crowns, necklaces and earrings.
A main suspect of their investigation was Douglas Latchford, a British antiquities supplier who specialised in Cambodian artifacts.
Latchford printed three books, certainly one of which was titled ”Khmer Gold: Presents of the Gods,” which confirmed pictures of gold and jewellery that had by no means been seen by Cambodians earlier than.
When Gordon confirmed the e-book to Toek Tik, he was shocked. He pored over the e-book with Gordon and his investigators and acknowledged lots of the items he had looted, and instructed them the place they went, main them proper again to Latchford.
Little is but recognized in regards to the jewellery and its significance, however Gordon believes that the jewellery was as soon as worn by the kings and queens of an historical Khmer Empire that spanned Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Thailand, and existed for a whole lot of years.
At Angkor Wat, Gordon and certainly one of his investigators did a side-by-side comparability of the reliefs protecting the temple partitions to the jewellery in Douglas Latchford’s e-book for Anderson Cooper and the 60 Minutes staff.
”And you may take a look at the reliefs…that present photos of historical Khmer kings from this historical Khmer empire,” Cooper defined. ”And you may see what seems to be very related [to], if not precisely, those self same jewels.”
Over a number of years, prosecutors for the Southern District of New York have been in a position to construct a case towards Latchford for the theft of Cambodian antiquities, however Latchford died earlier than he could possibly be extradited from Thailand to face trial.
Gordon traveled to the U.Okay. to satisfy Latchford’s daughter Julia. They ate at a pub outdoors of London. After lunch, she took Gordon to the parking zone, opened the trunk of a automotive, and began taking out historical Khmer jewellery from Tupperware packing containers.
”That is the place you are feeling like historical past’s bigger than your self. I simply felt like, ’Wow, unbelievable that it is sitting right here in a parking zone,'” Gordon instructed Cooper.
In a cope with the Cambodian authorities, Latchford’s household agreed to return his total assortment, together with the gold and jewellery.
The jewels have been welcomed house in an elaborate ceremony with conventional blessings by Buddhist monks. Cambodians in attendance have been in a position to see the traditional crowns, rings, earrings and necklaces in particular person for the primary time.
Cooper requested Gordon what the return of these jewels meant for Cambodians.
”They went via genocide,” he stated. ”I believe it is restoration of nationwide satisfaction.”
The video above was produced and edited by Will Croxton.
Pictures courtesy of Thomas Cristofoletti and Getty Photographs.