Belize Would Like America to Stop Selling its Illegally Exported Cultural Property

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Avatar drew my attention to this:

DEPARTMENT OF STATE [Public Notice 7602]
Notice of Receipt of Cultural Property Request From the Government of the Republic of Belize

Belize, concerned that its cultural heritage is in jeopardy from pillage, [has] made a request to the Government of the United States under Article 9 of the 1970 UNESCO Convention. United States Department of State received this request in September 2011. Belize's request seeks U.S. import restrictions on archaeological material from Belize representing its Pre-Colombian heritage dating from the Preceramic (9000 B.C.) through the Spanish Colonial period (A.D. 1798). The specific contents of this request are treated as confidential government-to-government information. Information about U.S. implementation of the 1970 UNESCO Convention can be found at http://exchanges.state.gov/heritage.* A public summary of Belize's request will be posted on that Web site.

Dated: September 30, 2011.
Ann Stock,
Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs,
Department of State.
[FR Doc. 2011-26646 Filed 10-13-11; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 4710-05-P

Avatar asks me to ask my readers to support this by sending comments to the CPAC by Nov 2nd. OK, though I am not personally a great fan of the CCPIA and all that goes with it, please do send some comments supporting a bilateral cultural property MOU if you agree that US dealers and collectors should not be importing illegally exported artefacts from any small neighbouring country affected by pillaging of archaeological sites. (Not that truly responsible ones would want to anyway.)

Since the archaeological sites of Belize do not produce ancient coins, I do not expect the usual loudmouth US-based "collectors' rights" (sic) lobbying group will be getting everybody's backs up by provoking another of their philistinic copy-and-paste fax-bombing campaigns. But lend the MOU some support if you can, let the US know the eyes of the world are upon her, and some of us care about the way they treat the global cultural heritage.

State Department Notice of Receipt of Request from Belize

Public Summary of Belize Request

Additional note to any ACCG members looking in:
Maybe in that case, since collectable coins are not involved, ACCG members in their thousands could show how "passionately interested" they ("really, really, no honestly") are in stopping looting by fax-bombing the CPAC in support of import restrictions on illegally exported dugup antiquities from ancient-coin-free Belize. (Go on, show the world what utter hypocrites you all are.)