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This week, 60 Minutes traveled to Cambodia to study connected the looting of past artifacts from temples crossed the state and way their travel to prestigious museums.
Correspondent Anderson Cooper and a squad visited the world-famous Khmer temple Angkor Wat, arsenic good arsenic respective different distant temples, to analyse however this decades-long creation heist was carried out.
"A batch of these temples person been heavy looted implicit decades, opening successful the genocide successful the 1970s," Cooper explained successful an interrogation with 60 Minutes Overtime.
In 1975, the Khmer Rouge, a extremist communist group, took implicit Cambodia. About 2 cardinal Cambodians were killed oregon starved to decease nether the regime.
In 1979, the Khmer Rouge mislaid power, but the warring continued for decades. The instability near Cambodia's temples unprotected and susceptible to plunder that was often carried retired by erstwhile Khmer Rouge kid soldiers. Priceless artifacts stolen from these temples would past extremity up successful the hands of unscrupulous antiquities dealers.
Brad Gordon, an American lawyer hired by the Cambodian authorities to way down and instrumentality these treasures, calls them "blood antiquities." The commercialized successful looted antiquities was a unsafe 1 that led to unit and murder.
"People were killed implicit these antiquities," helium said. "Whenever I spot a statue, I think, 'Who died to get this retired of the ground, oregon get it retired of a temple, and to determination it here?'"
Gordon took Cooper and 60 Minutes to a distant temple connected Sandak Mountain, 1 of the astir heavy looted sites successful Cambodia.
"It's similar thing retired of an Indiana Jones film," Cooper said. "It's a crumbled temple...and it's wholly successful a forest. It's overgrown."
Cooper said signs of looting were each around. Pedestals wherever statues erstwhile stood littered the ground. The severed feet of statues remained wherever they were hacked disconnected from the body.
During their investigation, Gordon and his squad learned that Sandak Mountain whitethorn person been looted for a circumstantial reason. Archaeologists and scholars discovered from transcriptions that tremendous amounts of golden had been brought to the temple.
A breakthrough came erstwhile Gordon met a erstwhile Khmer Rouge kid soldier, Toek Tik, who was codenamed "Lion" for his safety. He described uncovering hundreds of jars scattered passim the tract filled with jewelry similar crowns, necklaces and earrings.
A premier fishy successful their probe was Douglas Latchford, a British antiquities trader who specialized successful Cambodian artifacts.
Latchford published 3 books, 1 of which was titled "Khmer Gold: Gifts of the Gods," which showed photographs of golden and jewelry that had ne'er been seen by Cambodians before.
When Gordon showed the publication to Toek Tik, helium was shocked. He pored implicit the publication with Gordon and his investigators and recognized galore of the pieces helium had looted, and told them wherever they went, starring them close backmost to Latchford.
Little is yet known astir the jewelry and its significance, but Gordon believes that the jewelry was erstwhile worn by the kings and queens of an past Khmer Empire that spanned Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Thailand, and existed for hundreds of years.
At Angkor Wat, Gordon and 1 of his investigators did a side-by-side examination of the reliefs covering the temple walls to the jewelry successful Douglas Latchford's publication for Anderson Cooper and the 60 Minutes team.
"And you tin look astatine the reliefs...that amusement images of past Khmer kings from this past Khmer empire," Cooper explained. "And you tin spot what looks precise akin [to], if not exactly, those aforesaid jewels."
Over respective years, prosecutors for the Southern District of New York were capable to physique a lawsuit against Latchford for the theft of Cambodian antiquities, but Latchford died earlier helium could beryllium extradited from Thailand to look trial.
Gordon traveled to the U.K. to conscionable Latchford's girl Julia. They ate astatine a pub extracurricular of London. After lunch, she took Gordon to the parking lot, opened the trunk of a car, and started taking retired past Khmer jewelry from Tupperware boxes.
"That's wherever you consciousness similar history's larger than yourself. I conscionable felt like, 'Wow, unbelievable that it's sitting present successful a parking lot,'" Gordon told Cooper.
In a woody with the Cambodian government, Latchford's household agreed to instrumentality his full collection, including the golden and jewelry.
The jewels were welcomed location successful an elaborate ceremonial with accepted blessings by Buddhist monks. Cambodians successful attendance were capable to spot the past crowns, rings, earrings and necklaces successful idiosyncratic for the archetypal time.
Cooper asked Gordon what the instrumentality of those jewels meant for Cambodians.
"They went done genocide," helium said. "I deliberation it's restoration of nationalist pride."
The video supra was primitively published connected December 17, 2023. It was produced and edited by Will Croxton.
Photos courtesy of Thomas Cristofoletti and Getty Images.
In:
The hunt for Cambodia's stolen Khmer jewels
The hunt for Cambodia's stolen Khmer jewels
(06:09)
English (US) ·