Heritage

Again In Sana’a: Festival For Tourism And Cultural Heritage

“Again In Sana’a: Festival For Tourism And Cultural Heritage”

by Tamjid Alkohali via “National Yemen”

“The Glory Lights Association held the Festival of Tourism and Cultural Heritage in Al-Sabeen Park, sponsored by the Ministry of Tourism and the Tourism Promotion Board under the slogan “with our unity and dialogue we salute our heritage and the glory of our tourism.” The festival aimed to activate domestic tourism and recognize Yemeni habits and traditions.

The Festival was opened by Culture Minister Kassim Salaam who expressed his happiness at holding the festival, wishing to increase the cultural events in Yemen in order to emphasize the people’s belief in the unity of its land, heritage, history, and fate.

The Director General of Environment in the Tourism Ministry explained that the Festival aims to raise awareness of the importance of Yemeni heritage and coincides with the awareness of the outputs of the National Dialogue Conference.

The responsible of festival Afaf Hammoud said that the festival aims to encourage people to visit the internal tourist areas in Yemen instead of traveling abroad for tourism because Yemen isn’t less important and beautiful than any other country.

One of the festival’s visitors said the festival revealed that Yemen is rich in tourism and tourist sites, adding that tourism is a means for cultural and civilizational communication as well as for community cohesion.

The festival included a number of cultural and artistic events in addition to displays of handicraft products, textiles, and photographs at the provincial level. . . . “

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Peru: Recovery of Cultural Heritage Increases

by Paola Pinedo García via “InfoSurHoy“

LIMA, Peru – Peruvian cultural artifacts illegally sold on the international black market are being returned to museums and archeological sites from where they never should have left.

The joint efforts by the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have led to the repatriation of 3,018 pieces belonging to Peru’s cultural heritage since 2007.

Alongside the repatriated items, an additional 31,640 artifacts were recovered in Peru, according to Katie Navarro Vásquez, the director of recoveries in the General Directorate of Cultural Heritage Defense at the Ministry of Culture, which is dedicated to preventing and controlling the illegal trafficking in artifacts, and recovering and repatriating them domestically and internationally.

Prevention and security measures are carried out at three units the Ministry of Culture has established in Peru – at Lima’s Jorge Chávez International Airport, the Santa Rosa complex on the southern border with Chile and in the Postal Services office (Serpost) in the Peruvian capital.

“Our figures for rescued and repatriated items lead us to believe that our control units at strategic exit points from the country have definitely deterred traffickers from trying to smuggle heritage items through these points,” Navarro said.

Ongoing luggage and parcel checks at these three places are carried out by Ministry of Culture personnel alongside officers from the National Police and Customs, she added.

“Peru realized that the loss of its heritage is like somebody ripping out the pieces of our living jigsaw puzzle,” said Cecilia Bákula Budge, former director of the National Institute of Culture of Peru – today the Ministry of Culture – and current head of Peru’s Central Reserve Bank Museum. “I am confident that though we still have a lot to do, we are making progress on an uphill battle in terms of recoveries.”

Thanks to this, 340 cultural pieces destined to be smuggled out of the country were prevented from leaving Peru between January and May after 1,044 pieces were kept from being smuggled out of the country in 2013 and 1,870 in 2012.

“There has been a downward trend since 2007 in trafficking of cultural artifacts,” Navarro said. “This [is due to] our three units’ work. Now, [those] trying to smuggle cultural heritage are aware that we are at the main departure points in the country and that deters them. For us, it’s important that cultural heritage does not cross the border since, once outside, rescuing the pieces – though not impossible – is certainly more difficult [due to] long repatriation processes.” . . . .

“Saving Guangxi’s Cultural Heritage from Decline”

via “South China Morning Post”

Dancers from the Zhuang ethnic group perform at the San Yue San festival in Wuming county, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, on Wednesday. Photo: Xinhua

Residents of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region are enjoying a new two-day official holiday the local government has offered to encourage them to participate in an annual ethnic minority singing festival.

Wednesday was the third day of the third month of the Chinese lunar calendar, when crowds traditionally gather to sing in the antiphonal, or call-and-answer, style to find love and make new friends.

Historically, it has been observed by more than 27 million people of Zhuang, Yao, Miao, Dong and Mulao ethnicities in Guangxi, or half the region’s total population.

However, the 1,300-year-old custom has lost its allure in the modern era, prompting government action to help it survive and regain popularity.

With the event’s auspicious date falling this year on a Wednesday, the day was a major test of whether the festival could thrive again.

Before dawn on Wednesday, Deng Zhiting from Dakeng village in Fangchenggang city got up to take part in the government-organised singalong attended by thousands of Zhuang and Yao people.

But the spritely 72-year-old, dressed in Yao traditional costume and carrying a flute-like instrument, frowned when he saw only a few young faces in the crowd.

“What a lean time for our group’s folk songs,” he grumbled. “We don’t have young people to inherit this treasure.” (more…)

“Battles Loom Over Crimea’s Cultural Heritage”

via Reuters

“YALTA, CRIMEA/KYIV — From the 16th-century Tatar Khans’ palace in Bakhchisaray to the former tsarist residence that hosted the World War II Yalta conference, Crimea’s heritage sites have become a source of bitter contention since Russia seized the region from Ukraine.

For Kyiv, which does not recognize Moscow’s annexation of Crimea, losing the cultural and historic legacy of the Black Sea peninsula would be another major blow and Ukraine is readying for long legal battles with Russia.

“We will never give up the valuable heritage in Crimea because that is the property of Ukraine,” the country’s prosecutor general, Oleh Makhnitsky, told Reuters on Wednesday.

Ukraine’s Culture Minister, Yevgen Nishchuk, said Kyiv was amending its laws to seek justice internationally should Russia start removing cultural goods from Crimea or take over formal supervision of the region’s heritage sites.

One exhibition, put together by five museums – including four in Crimea – and currently on display in Amsterdam, has already fallen hostage to the conflict over the region, the worst stand-off between Russia and the West since the Cold War.

Both Crimea’s pro-Russian authorities as well as Kyiv claim ownership of the exhibition, titled “Crimea – Gold and Secrets of the Black Sea”, which features golden artifacts and precious gems dating back to the fourth century BC.

The show is operated by the University of Amsterdam and spokesman Yasha Lange said a legal investigation was going on to determine to whom the collection should be returned after it closes at the end of August.

“The exhibition should return to Crimea,” said Valentina Mordvintseva, who works for Ukraine’s National Academy of Sciences in Crimea’s provincial capital of Simferopol and who helped Amsterdam’s Allard Pierson Museum set up the exhibit.

“So it has become a political issue,” she told Reuters. “If the things end up held in Kyiv, I think it would be bad for Ukraine itself because it would look like vengeance.”

She was referring to a March 16 referendum in Crimea, an impoverished region of two million with a narrow ethnic Russian majority, which yielded an overwhelming victory for those advocating a split from Ukraine to join Russia.

Kyiv and the West dismissed the hastily arranged vote as a sham but Moscow used it to justify formally incorporating Crimea on March 21.

Crimea has since then introduced the Russian ruble as its currency and switched to Moscow time, while Russian troops have taken over Ukrainian military bases, forcing Kyiv to pull out its soldiers with their families.

Tatars, Tsars and Stalin

Prosecutor Makhnitsky said the Justice Ministry in Kyiv was preparing to register lawsuits with international organizations to assert its rights to the historic and cultural sites in Crimea.

The ministry refused immediate comment on what exactly it plans to do, but any such endeavor is likely to be an uphill battle as Russia controls the region.

Underscoring how any efforts from Kyiv could face further obstacles, some directors of Crimea museums have welcomed unification with Russia in the hope it will lead to increased budget support from Moscow.

Valery Naumenko, director of a museum housed in the historic residence of the Crimean Khans in Bakhchisaray, complained that Kyiv had not allocated any funds for the upkeep of the palace, which is dominated by two slender minarets. (more…)