Statues wrapped up or made safe, collections evacuated, “blue shields” affixed to threatened monuments: Ukraine is desperately trying to protect its heritage from the war while aiming to have Moscow condemned, in the long term, by international justice.
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In the center of Lviv, a large western city so far spared from the fighting, the countless statues are now wrapped in foam, protective tarpaulins and fireproof fabrics to preserve them from a possible attack. The stained glass windows of the churches have been covered, an altar unsealed and hidden.
Hundreds of sandbags were piled around a monument paying tribute to the Duke of Richelieu, founder of Odessa, before intense fighting was announced in this southern metropolis with a rich history.
Because elsewhere the bombardments did not spare the old stones. Kharkiv (north-east), the second largest Ukrainian city, and Cherniguiv, near Kyiv, saw their city centers ravaged by Russian bombs.
“Some include sites and monuments dating from the 11th century,” regrets Lazare Eloundou Assomo, director of the UNESCO World Heritage Center, interviewed by AFP.
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And to list damaged museums, “some with collections inside” but also “cultural places and shows”. “It’s a whole cultural life that risks disappearing, even sometimes a whole History”, not only that of Ukraine but “a bit of a part of the History of humanity”.
According to Ihor Poshyvailo, the director of the Maidan museum in Kyiv, which coordinates a citizens’ initiative aimed at protecting Ukrainian heritage, around 40 sites or monuments were damaged in the country during the first two weeks of the conflict.
To avoid further damage, Unesco and the Ukrainian government have set up a targeting of the main sites via a “blue shield” to “avoid their destruction in time of war”.
This marking, which takes the form of a blue and white coat of arms, has already started in Lviv, which is a World Heritage Site, like six other Ukrainian sites.
Some 17 other places, including the city centers of Odessa or Cherniguiv, appear on an “indicative” list from Unesco. Kyiv must eventually present their candidacy so that they integrate the United Nations World Heritage.
The authorities are “in the process of printing tarpaulins to put in front of the monuments, on the roofs or the facades”, so that the Russian army refrains from bombarding them, explains a diplomat active within Unesco.
This “blue shield” is part of a convention signed in 1954 for the protection of cultural property in the event of armed conflict, of which Russia is a signatory. In addition to the hoped-for preservation of these places, the measure must also serve as an instrument of constraint for the belligerents.
In 2016, a Malian jihadist was sentenced to nine years in prison for the destruction of protected mausoleums, and indicated as such, in Timbuktu.
“If we do everything to protect our heritage, Russia will have to pay for each destruction,” said Olga Ganenko, a Ukrainian diplomat with UNESCO. And to hope that Moscow is put “face to face with its responsibilities”.
The strategy is however “very controversial”, according to Ihor Poshyvailo, who fears that the monuments marked in blue will instead become “deliberate targets” of Russian troops. Because “Russia does not want to destroy museums” as such, it “wants to destroy our historical memory and our cultural identity as a nation”, he laments.
The analysis is identical for Jasminko Halilovic, the founder of the museum for Children at War in Sarajevo, who had opened a branch in Ukraine.
“If one of the parties attacks schools and hospitals, children, it is very unreasonable to think that it will not attack cultural heritage,” he said.
During the siege of Sarajevo, which lasted almost four years between 1992 and 1996, all places of culture had, according to him, been destroyed “deliberately” by the Serbian side.
And to observe: “if you try to destroy a community, one of the things you will definitely target is its cultural heritage, because it tells of a people who they were, what they are and what they are called to become.
Reference-www.tvanouvelles.ca