Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id XAA22189 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Sun, 4 Mar 2001 23:18:14 GMT Subject: Fwd: Witness Tells of Taliban Attack on Ancient Buddha Relics Date: Sun, 4 Mar 2001 18:14:18 -0500 x-sender: wsmith1@camail2.harvard.edu x-mailer: Claris Emailer 2.0v3, Claritas Est Veritas From: "Wade T.Smith" <wade_smith@harvard.edu> To: "Memetics Discussion List" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Message-ID: <20010304231418.AAA9555@camailp.harvard.edu@[205.240.180.104]> Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
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By Amir Shah
Associated Press Writer
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - Taliban soldiers blasted two towering ancient
statues of Buddha with anti-aircraft weapons, according to the first
witness
account from the area on Sunday.
Other statues throughout the country were being demolished with rockets,
tanks and explosives, ridding the nation of reminders of its pre-Islamic
past.
A resident of central Bamiyan said Taliban soldiers began attacking the
relics at least three days earlier. The area is where the two ancient
statues of Buddha were hewn from a cliff face in the third and fifth
centuries.
"I could see the Taliban soldiers firing anti-aircraft weapons at the two
statues. That was three days ago," said Safdar Ali, who arrived Sunday in
the Afghan capital of Kabul from Bamiyan, about 80 miles away.
"The soldiers wouldn't let us get too close so I couldn't see how much was
damaged. We just left the area," he said.
The Taliban have ignored pleas from an outraged world to stop the
destruction of the ancient statues, even snubbing an offer from the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to take the works and preserve
them.
"We are not against culture, but we don't believe in these things. They
are
against Islam," the Taliban's Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil told
The Associated Press in a telephone interview from southern Kandahar - the
headquarters of the Taliban.
Muttawakil was to meet later Sunday with Pierre Lafrance, a special UNESCO
envoy sent from Paris to try to negotiate with the Taliban and register
the
world's outrage at the destruction.
"I will explain our point of view and our internal situation," Muttawakil
said.
On Saturday, Quatradullah Jamal, the Taliban's Information and Culture
Minister, told the AP that troops had destroyed two-thirds of all the
statues in Afghanistan as well as large parts of the two giant statues of
Buddha. Muttawakil confirmed that.
By Monday - exactly one week after the Taliban's reclusive leader, Mullah
Mohammed Omar, ordered all statues destroyed - the task will be complete,
Jamal said.
The Taliban religious militia, which rules 95 percent of Afghanistan,
including Kabul, adheres to a strict brand of Islamic law. Their
interpretation has been questioned by Islamic scholars in other Muslim
countries and Islamic institutions.
The two Buddhas, 175 and 120 feet tall, were damaged in fighting and
defaced
by Russian soldiers who carved their names in the statues following the
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which began in 1979, witnesses said.
One of the statues is thought to be the world's tallest of a Buddha
standing
rather than sitting.
The destruction of statues began after Omar ruled that they were
idolatrous
and against the tenets of Islam. Others argue that Islam does not ban
images, only the worship of them.
Muttawakil rejected offers from several countries and the New York museum
to
take the statues.
"Why should we give them to anyone? They are against our beliefs. We have
museums here and we will keep our cultural and historical artifacts
there,"
he said.
The Taliban have been unmoved by international appeals to save the
statues -
even those from fellow Muslim nations, including their closest ally,
Pakistan.
Expressions of shock and dismay tumbled in over the weekend, from China,
Japan and Greece to the U.N. Educational, Scientific, and Cultural
Organization and the environment ministers from the world's seven most
industrialized countries plus Russia meeting in Trieste, Italy.
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