Cultural Property and Antiquities Must be Protected from Irresponsible Dealings

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Two second year law students at Georgetown Law School in Washington DC belong to an otherwise unknown group - they say - called "Students Against Looting of Valuable Antiquities". They've just published an article called "Cultural property and antiquities must be protected". It begins:

Every time we turn on the news, members of Congress are railing about wasteful federal spending and the dire need to curb ineffective programs.

before revealing that what it is talking about is the US International Cultural Property Protection programme. It calls this "one of the most ineffective, and potentially illegal, federally-funded committees". According to these students, Deborah Newburg and Amanda Blunt as part of this programme:

the Department of State creates over[-]inclusive trade restrictions that deny acquisitions to U.S. collectors and museums.

Let us be clear about what they neglect to say. These restrictions are only applied to cultural property of specific types from a small number of specially designated countries and only apply to those that cannot be documented as having been exported legally from those countries. Basically, I would have thought that, with the overall aim of protecting cultural property and antiquities, responsible (ethical) museums and collectors would themselves be taking steps to deny illegally obtained items access to their collections.

Apparently the authors consider that the situation in the US compares unfavourably with "European markets with more precise but less restrictive import bans". Eh? What "import bans" exist on the European market for cultural property? European states which are parties of the same 1970 UNESCO Convention as the US apply the respecting of the obligations it places on states party less selectively than the US (as is the intention of the Convention), but what does "more precise but less restrictive" mean? In the US one can according to US law perfectly legally import bucketloads (indeed container-loads) of ancient coins and brooches metal detected on bulldozed sites in southern Europe without any paperwork at all and nobody bats an eyelid. Only in the case of items from a relatively small number of "source countries" has the US reached specific agreements with those countries (who first specifically requested it) that it will examine the paperwork accompanying the items to ensure it is in order. This by the way is what they really should be doing with ALL antiquities and cultural items coming across their borders, and not only because they are (nominally) a state party of the 1970 UNESCO Convention!

Newburg and Blunt apparently consider that keeping illegally exported antiquities out of the North American antiquities market is "turning away major investments during a recession", I'd like to ask them where they think this American money is being "invested", when it is coming into the hands of those committing culture-crime? Into what kind of ventures do they think the organised criminal groups that are behind much of this looting are "investing" the money of US collectors raised by the illegal trafficking of smuggled antiquities?

Newburg and Blunt say they consider that "protecting art and cultural property is an important goal", and roundly criticise the CPAC as a means the US has chosen to do this. But one gets the impression that their reasons for this are because it leads to measures that they consider are too "restrictive" for US museums and collectors. Surely the opposite is true, the current US measures, embodied in the CPIA and other legislation allow (encourage almost) the completely unrestricted no-questions-asked and indiscriminate commerce in artefacts from most of the world's countries that are sources of illegally obtained artefacts for the US market. That is why it needs reform in order to help protect the international cultural heritage, to make it more transparent and restrictive of illegally obtained articles coming freshly onto the market, not less. I am sure Newburg and Blunt would agree that the US, one of the largest global markets for this type of material, should be leading the way, not dragging along behind the rest of the world in this.