 good morning, good afternoon and good evening wherever you are. I'm Christian Lutzonitz, I'm Senior Lecturer in the Department of Buddhist Art, and I'm welcoming you to this second event in this kind of two-talk series on behalf of the Southeast Asian Art Academic Program as well as the Suwa Center of Southeast Asian Studies Seminar Series, led by Udom Luk Honja Kul this year. This is the second event on Artifacts, Identities and Restitution that celebrates the first, or the publication of the first volume in a joint publication series between the Southeast Asian Art Academic Program and the National Universities of Singapore Press. The book is edited by Panga Adyansha and Louis Stilakot and on the subject returning Southeast Asia's past objects, museums and restitutions. Yesterday one of the editors shared the session today, it's the turn of the second editor, my former colleague, former and future colleague, Louis Stilakot and also a co-investigator in the Joint Research Project on Tibetan Monastery Collections. And currently, Louis Stilakot is the Wuntai G professor in Asian Art at Northumbria University. Her research focuses on collecting and displaying Chinese and Buddhist art in museums and she has particular interest in issues around restitution and Asian material. So with this, I hand over the words to her. I hope. Thank you very much, Christian, for that warm welcome and thanks everybody for coming today and supporting this event. So a very warm welcome to this, as Christian said, the second Southeast Asian Art Academic Program or SARP research seminar on restitution. As Christian said, we had a session yesterday, a rather wonderful session on the politics of restitution, which was chaired by my co-editor, Panga Adyansya. And it was notable that one of the speakers towards the end of that session, Joss, noted that yesterday's session was very much what he referred to as a man's affair with four male speakers. And I'm really delighted to say that today it'll be what Joss referred to as a woman's affair in that we have three female speakers and myself. So in that sense, it's quite a contrast to yesterday's panel or manual, as I sometimes referred to. So the title of today's session is Artifacts, Identities and Restitution. And unlike yesterday, where the two main speakers focused on Indonesia and there was also a wonderful presentation on Cambodia, today we'll be looking at the situation of restitution in two countries, in particular Myanmar and Thailand. And I'm really delighted to be able to welcome and introduce our two speakers and also our discussant today. So our first speaker will be Dr Charlotte Galloway, who is an honorary associate professor at the Australian National University. Charlotte has extensive experience in the museum sector as a curator and registrar, and she was previously convener for the Curatorial Studies Programme at the National University, Australian National University. An Asian art historian with a specialist expertise in Myanmar, Charlotte has worked collaboratively with Myanmar Department of Archaeology and the National Museum on numerous projects. And in fact, she was the UNESCO expert for Bagan's World Heritage Listing. Charlotte is also an international member of Aikomos Myanmar and an active researcher of the Myanmar arts and cultural heritage. And very importantly, she also contributed a wonderful chapter to our edited volume, entitled Myanmar Museums and the Repatriation of Cultural Heritage. Our second speaker today is Patra Pom Panam Van, or we refer to her as Patra, who is a lecturer in medieval and economic history and an archaeologist at the University of Oxford. She's working on sustainable archaeological heritage development and community resilience against art crime. She's currently appointed as Senior Specialist for TSEP, District Cultural Council, Petra Bunn Province in Thailand. And importantly, she also contributed a rather wonderful chapter to our edited volume. And it was entitled Plibat, Reclaiming Heritage Social Media and Modern Nationalism. And we're joined today by our discussant, who I'm sure is familiar to many of you, Undum La-Hun Traknol, who is a PhD candidate in history of art and archaeology at SOAS, under the supervision of Professor Ashley Thompson. Her PhD research focuses on the highland region between the Salween and Ping River basins and aims to understand political, dynamic, social and cultural interaction between highlands and lowlands, the development of highland socio-political structure, and political entities between the first millennial CE and the 15th century CE. She obtained her BA in archaeology from Sulpukon University. She has an MA in social development from Chiang Mai University, and of course an MA in history of art and archaeology from SOAS. And in fact, prior to starting her PhD at SOAS, she also taught archaeology, museum and heritage at the Faculty of Sociology and Anthropology at Tamasat University in Thailand. So welcome to all our speakers today. Before moving on and introducing Charlotte's presentation, I thought I would just say that the overall format, the structure for the session today will be the same as yesterday. We have two speakers, both presenting I think for around possibly 30 to 40 minutes this time. And we also have a discussion, a final discussion with Om for 10 minutes or so. We will have time for questions from the audience after this, as we did yesterday. So please do make sure that you submit your questions into the Q&A box as we go along. And then we'll be coordinating the discussion of these questions towards the end of the session. So in terms of Charlotte's talk then, her presentation is entitled Repatriation, Restitution and Myanmar. And she has written the following blurb about her talk. She says, Myanmar's more recent history has done little to support or protect the rich cultural heritage of the country. A troubled colonial rule than a military regime, for approaches to heritage management fall well behind international developments. In the last decade during the transition to democracy, open engagement with contemporary approaches to protecting movable cultural heritage has not been possible. Repatriation of cultural heritage is now occurring but this can be complex when considering Buddhist objects which were donations to temples or monasteries and have no clear chain of ownership. She says, restitution may at times be an appropriate alternative. Apart from the moral and legal arguments supporting repatriation or restitution, the current political situation brings of course yet more complexities to returning Myanmar's heritage. So thank you very much Charlotte and over to you. Thank you very much Louise and I will just share my screen and we trust that this will work as it did in our rehearsal. And if you could just confirm that that is appearing appropriately for everyone at the other end. Thank you. Can everyone hear me? Sorry can I just ask someone to respond? Yes we can hear you but we can't see the powerpoint yet. Oh goodness. You just need to do a share screen on the zoom window I think. Yes I think that's I did exactly what we did last time but it obviously hasn't worked. Sorry here we go. Sorry about that we did this last time and it didn't and it did work. One good way of fixing this. Now this I know will work. Ah there we go. My apologies and from beginning. Okay now they're going to tell me that is correct. We still can't see it. You're kidding. Yeah why don't you. That's ridiculous. All right. Go on the zoom page and click on share screen first. Yep I'll just close that. There we go. Find the powerpoint window from from the options. Yes now we see it. Now we see it. Thank you. All right new slide show. Oh slide show from beginning. All right now thank you. Good well apologies for that first few little hiccups. Maybe it is the time of day on a Friday evening here in Canberra. As is customary as I'm giving my academic presentation I acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which I am currently in place the Nunawal and Nambri people and pay tribute and respect to their elders past present and emerging. It is certainly a pleasure to be able to present today and I thank very much and Panga for the invitation and to the organisers of this series. Repatriation of my work in Myanmar you know repatriation of cultural heritage to countries for which for the most part have had such objects removed either during colonial rule or being illegally exported for financial gain is without doubt a meritorious act and when I'm thinking about activities in Myanmar of course this act of merit very much comes to mind with Myanmar being such a predominantly Buddhist country but I do wonder how meritorious these acts may be. I'm delivering my talk today very conscious of my role as an outsider the western art historian and heritage professional who sees benefits in writing past wrongs and applauding the international treaties established principally by representative bodies of countries who were in positions of global power. My role as outsider is all the more obvious in light of the current events in Myanmar which see many of my colleagues yet again unable to participate freely in international forums reliant on others to hopefully convey their views and opinions and with this in mind I make clear here that my presentation draws on my own observations and experiences and researching in Myanmar for over 20 years and my work with the department of archaeology and museum I've been fortunate to have collaborated with Myanmar colleagues on numerous museum and heritage projects and I do pause for thought here as I know we all care for the safety of our fellow academics and friends. Today in focusing on the repatriation of objects to Myanmar it is like everything about Myanmar a complex issue and I really can only touch on some points here. When researching for the book chapter in Louise and Pangas timely and important publication I really did become very curious as to why Myanmar had not been more proactive to repatriation of cultural heritage. There are numerous objects in international public collections that have clear provenance histories which would suggest that these objects are you know have been taken from Myanmar in the past illegally and it would have been quite likely that in the current international museum environment then any approaches made to governments for their return would be viewed favorably. In this process it brought to my mind some issues though which had also been troubling me a little while working well troubling me a lot really while working on capacity building with Myanmar's museum environment and namely it's a fundamental issue of what is cultural heritage in Myanmar. Do the objects that I have been trained to believe are examples of Myanmar's cultural history in Western art historical paradigms of the same assumed importance to the Burmese and I don't think I've ever had or heard a discussion about local priorities in this regard and yet this is fundamental to progressing repatriation or addressing any discussions about repatriation or restitution to Myanmar understanding what the local attitudes are towards repatriation and perhaps considering that repatriations or reparations might be more appropriate in some cases whether indeed you know is this even of particular interest to Myanmar. You know other issues of course is you know who do we give back objects to and what do we do now with a Myanmar experience it's military coup and I'll talk a little bit about some very real-time example at the end of my presentation. So just starting with what is heritage in Myanmar. There has always been for me a very clear difference between how many of us in Western societies view our heritage and our museum collections and how those in non-Western countries may view their material heritage. I've grown up in an environment where we treat our objects and museums with a degree of reverence we have a great attachment to objects of the past but observing how my colleagues in Myanmar even physically interact with objects and in discussions about them you know sometimes with what you know of how you manage museums and objects and objects in museum collections it's very clear to me that our relationship with things is and what they symbolize is very different and between our two cultures and often handling and when you're trying to engage with workshops and so on in museum practices you know handling can often be I watch them it's no different just to picking up a dish and taking it to the table so the experience we have with actual objects is quite different between these cultures. So before embarking on any sort of widespread and spread and repatriation we need to understand what cultural heritage is in this Myanmar context and if we don't share or understand these differences our value judgments will result in conflicting goals and approaches and even potentially unwelcome to unnecessary returns of movable cultural artifacts and central to this probably is that repatriation itself is a western construct which developed principally within government and museum frameworks and how does a country engage in these frameworks and structures if they haven't had them very long themselves and I believe this is a very important point when considering Myanmar and we often forget how new western concepts of heritage and museums are within the country. I've just put up here a very brief sort of recent history of Myanmar on our slide the slide you know they became part of the British Empire from as early as 1852 but with full was full colonial rule from 1886. We had World War II then independence in 1948 a military coup in 62 first open elections in 2010 then again full open elections in 2015 again in 2020 but then again we've had now a military coup on the day the new government was meant to be sworn in. So it's actually been a very disruptive recent history at the same time if we think about what's happening in museum developments around the world this has been a very unfortunate environment and background for that to develop in parallel. So when we actually have a look at some of the Myanmar's museum history in brief and I think this is important in understanding the role of how restitution or repatriation issues fit in here. One probably key thing is that the British actually established many significant museums throughout this part of the British Empire and yet there was never a government funded major museum built in Myanmar during colonial rule. The first museum established was the Independent Fair Provincial Museum which opened in Yangon in 1867 named after Arthur Fair the British Chief Commissioner. It comprised his own collection and this is an interesting point in itself as the time of course colonizers saw their collecting as a right in line with sort of spoils of war or even just being you know part of an empire that objects could be collected and quite happily without any idea that these were being taken. Even in 1892, an engineer with the British and Indian government who was tasked on reporting on local architecture noted the condition of the Fair Museum building and remarked and I quote, there's the chief city of the only Indo-Chinese country under British rule. Rangoon should have a particularly good museum end of quote but why was there no major public museum in Yangon? And in really the complexities of colonial rule answer this question in part and suffice to say here I think most of us appreciate that the British-Burmese colonial interactions was rather an unhappy one. The British as I mentioned had established major museums throughout in India, Sri Lanka, modern-day Pakistan and Bangladesh and history has shown that much of the collections in these museums remained in place at the end of colonial rule so that was a relatively fortunate outcome that was not afforded a Myanmar. Without a single museum as a central repository for cultural heritage it was difficult to control the export of Burmese art and Zirtel also noted even in the late 1800s many of the precious antiquities were fast being lost or removed from the country. It was only in 1952 four years after independence that a national library museum and art gallery was opened and it was called the Cultural Institute and the aim of the institute was you know quote to strengthen the national unity of Burma by raising the cultural level of the people to bring history to life and to create an awareness of the cultural heritage of the past. And this was so what was that cultural heritage? I'll just put up a couple of slides here while I'm talking to just as some of the early museums there were some early sort of museums created in Myanmar but they were associated really with the archaeological departments and of course that was run by the British at the time and there were small regional museums like this one at Bagan which housed artifacts from the site. So what was as I mentioned this cultural heritage that was referred to in the official government reports of 1953? Well in 1958 a paper by the then director of the Archaeological Survey of Burma Yulu-Pewin listed aspects of Burma's culture which endured throughout the period of colonial rule and were considered of importance to Burma's identity. These included religious architecture, civil architecture, painting, lack aware, silver and gold work, weaving, language and literature, drama, astrology, weights and measures, coinage and festivals and I note they're the absence of reference to particularly Buddhist sculpture and other Buddhist artifacts. But I've included this quote as it is about Burma's perception of their culture and yet when we discuss Burma's cultural heritage we inevitably return to Buddhism as almost all of the historic artifacts that have survived are connected to Buddhism and the act of dana or donation. Myanmar's engagement with international museum trends in those early years post-independence was rapid. They were signatories to a number of international conventions and they ratified the UNESCO protocol for protection of cultural property the 1954 convention and the protection of cultural property in the event of armed conflict was ratified also 1956. UNESCO was active in supporting Myanmar's museum development providing staff training for staff. Myanmar passed the 1957 Antiquities Act though this also interestingly allowed the director of archaeology to remove any object from its original location if it was deemed to be at risk. And it is probably this clause that has enabled so many objects to be removed under the guise of safekeeping during the ensuing decades of military rule and to be traded to foreign markets. The main aim of course being to attain hard currency particularly during periods of international sanctions. There was even a museum week held in 1961 to mark the ninth anniversary of the national museum and national art gallery. Regional cultural museums were established to major centres such as Paan and Taungi and cultural activities were actively promoted. However this was as far as Myanmar would get and meaningfully engaging with the heritage sector for nearly 50 years. The 1962 coup cut short Myanmar's rapid advancement and the country's evident potential was quashed. Under Ney Winsburners Socialist Programme Party rule management of regional cultural museums was transferred to the Ministry of Culture in 1972 and the collections were also nationalised. One there was, we know there was a period then of quite of separation really from any international engagement but when the restrictions to foreign aid were relaxed in the early 1980s there was a brief flurry of international engagement again which resulted in experts being brought into Bagan in particular to map its monuments. However after the 1988 uprising which led to Ney Wins resignation and power being seized by the State Law and Order Restoration Council or SLAWC, this really marks the beginning of a period of extreme suppression again and further stagnation of the arts and heritage sectors. The SLAWC really took over heritage. It built grand cultural edifices including the New National Museum in Yangon which opened in 1996 and the preposterously large Bagan Archaeological Museum in the middle of the Archaeological Zone at Bagan. At the same time building this as they were submitting Bagan for its unsuccessful World Heritage Listing in the mid 1990s. Yet once completed the museums basically were stagnated. People didn't visit, there were people in charge, did not have any training and it was really not until the transition to democracy from 2008 that true international engagement was reinvigorated and since then through to February the 1st 2021 the museums and heritage sector has experienced significant growth and modernisation thanks to government support and international accepting international donor funding to provide staff and training for capacity building. And I note here you know this was Myanmar's first children museum opened in 2017 and that was done in large part to the director of the museum at Bagan who had also benefited from training and so on during this period. Myanmar also signed numerous the additional treaties in 2013 means of prohibiting and preventing the illicit import, export and transfer of ownership of cultural properties and also the convention for the safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage was ratified in 2014. The National Museum in Napidaw was opened in 2015 and of course we're familiar with the two major exhibitions held in the US which had loans from Myanmar which was the first time that Myanmar had engaged with international museums and exhibitions. Myanmar was also admitted as a member of ICOM in 2016 and Myanmar ICOMOS was formed in 2017 so there was a real connection there with international museum professionals and the government also then and I say here re-engaged with repatriation. So in spite of some of those more negative comments about the early period of colonial rule when Myanmar gained independence in 1948 the first act of voluntary repatriation was authorised and this was done by the British government. King Theibor's Lion's Throne taken from Mandalay Palace to the Indian Museum in Kolkata in 1902 was returned under the direction of Lord Louis Mountbatten while he was vice-roy of India and this was the first official act of heritage repatriation to Myanmar. It was a symbolic act and a token in a way for years of colonial rule and even though the monarchy would not be re-established the Lion's Throne was a powerful representation of Myanmar's independent and proud past. Other acts of repatriation followed in 1956 a treasure chest of Queen Supayalat was returned from the UK and this ivory chair from Mandalay Palace was presented and I love reading some of these old books because we we sort of have these teasers of I'd love to know more about these people who and how they came in possession of these objects and obviously that's something for further research but this chair which is now in the collection of the National Museum in Yangon and on display messes Ogden and Sun's Jewelers of Harrogate in London this was received through the Burmese Embassy in London. There was also the return of these pair of locapala gnats which were from King Fibor's Palace in Mandalay and these were presented by Wing Commander Martin who from Queen's Gate in London and these figures actually flank the Lion's Throne today in the National Museum in Yangon and you can see them on the edge of the screen at the at the image. So other objects were gifted a Gilded Buddha from the palace at Ava donated by a Mrs Ride daughter of the late Captain Barwick of Folkestone UK. There was also an old Monbelle was sent back from Calcutta which apparently had valuable informative inscriptions. In 1959 the Ministry of Culture reports states that Prime Minister Unu formally requested the return of historic Burmese weapons then housed at Fort William Calcutta which the British had taken from Burma at the end of the Third Anglo-Burmese War and these were returned these were indeed returned but apart from these examples these repatriation requests were very much associated with the colonial history in Myanmar even though we do know that there were a number of significant cultural objects removed by the western nations perhaps the best-known case concerning freezes and frescoes and tiles taken from Bagan by German treasure Thomas Tomah around 1899. The works are well documented but no attempts have been made to repatriate these objects. But if we move forward to the post 2010 period the music as I mentioned the museum sector has advanced rapidly and there have been public acts of repatriation and each raises different issues. In 2013 a Bagan period Buddha was returned from the US. The process had started in 1988 when the upper two-thirds of the statue was stolen from Bagan and advertised for sale at Sotheby's in 1991 and after many years of persistent legal investigation scholarly involvement by staff at the Burma Study Centre at Illinois University it was returned and reunited with the lower third of the statue which was still in Myanmar. This sculpture is now on display in the National Museum along with this plaque that tells you the story and it's just an example of this display and it's nice new newly renovated spaces however this case did actually highlight some of the political factors which affect repression here. The time taken to resolve this case was affected by the US sanctions on Myanmar which prohibited any progression of repatriation even in spite of international laws which facilitated this return. In July 2017 there were two further cases of repatriation and the first involved in New Zealand family who decided to return a small group of objects taken by their ancestors in 1852 during the Second Anglo-Burmese War from the Shweymudur Pagoda at Pagoda. The provenance was well known to the family members and the current custodians were not comfortable with the history of these objects a situation prompted by changing attitudes towards the colonial periods and actions of the colonizers. For the family in press interviews they positioned themselves as caretakers acknowledging that at the time taking souvenirs from battle areas by conquering troops was not really viewed as inappropriate behavior and returning the objects was seen as what we call restorative justice. However in a discussion on the moral arguments for repatriation philosopher Karen Buenberg argues that returning the physical object may not be the most appropriate means of compensation in these cases. In returning the objects to Myanmar how has this enhanced Myanmar's cultural history and how does the return in any way right past wrongs? In this example perhaps a financial donation to the Pagoda for support of local charities or commissioning of a New Buddha image for donation may have been in a way a more appropriate or popular action. The same month the Norwegian government returned a 200-year old Buddha image and the statue was seized by custom officials in 2011 and while details of the case are not well known it appears the statue was exported to Norway via Thailand and the Buddha image was returned to Myanmar and handed over to ceremony at the museum in Napidor and this was a textbook case though of international agencies working together utilizing the legislative frameworks of international law and conventions. However Myanmar was not necessarily really part of this this was part of Norway deciding this object picking up this object is something that was likely to be illegally imported contacting the Myanmar government and then working through that process of returning the object. Myanmar also introduced their own annual antiquities law in 2015 which is the protection and preservation of antique objects law and any object that's over 100 years of age whether made in Myanmar or made in a foreign country and has been in Myanmar for 100 years is included in this and while it's positive to see this law enacted there are aspects of it which may in fact discourage repatriation. If a Burmese national for example or anybody buys an object overseas of Burmese origin that might be over 100 years old if you actually want to take that back to Myanmar you may be deemed to be in breach of the law because you're in possession of an object which is over 100 years of age and there is no case law yet to try to test this in Myanmar but it has been discussed as causing quite a few difficulties potential difficulties. The law does in fact reference repatriation includes a clause that actually states that the government and Myanmar could request the antique objects of Myanmar origin which are in foreign countries which indicates a good awareness of the process of repatriation. Myanmar is well placed to proceed with repatriation requests and while there may have been a valid argument in the past to query Myanmar's ability to safeguard repatriated items their museum systems are now fairly have been fairly robust and there's a reasonable degree of transparency in most aspects of their museum activities. However no actions have yet been taken and this brings me back to the issue of importance so I'll just move through that to the issue of you know what what objects are of significance to people in Myanmar and objects that are no longer there what purpose may repatriation serve particularly as Myanmar's cultural heritage is primarily associated with Buddhism. As I mentioned Buddhism in Myanmar is characterized by the practice of donation with a donor earning merit and underpinning Buddhist philosophy is the goal of enlightenment which will bring with it a release from suffering and of course one of the causes of suffering is attachment. This extends to all things whether living or inanimate and it is readily seen how this foundational belief is at odds with placing nostalgic value on objects linked with the past. Buddhist cycles of rebirth encourage renewal family heirlooms often seen in western culture as a link between past person and future do not always have the same role in Myanmar culture. Yes there are objects associated with ritual tradition but the objects themselves are often subject to renewal and of course merit is earned through the donation not necessarily the maintenance of a particular object and if an object is damaged a new one will often take its place. Another factor which colours Myanmar's attitudes to objects is their association with particular events. Karmatic Buddhism melds with local indigenous nat spirit or spirit worship and this tradition in spirits need to be appeased as they can be malevolent. Both Buddhist and nat traditions discourage attachment to objects that are linked to misfortune and if bad luck befalls a family others are unlikely to want to possess their property as it becomes tainted with this misfortune and this applies across all levels of society even in Burmese monarchy there was evidence of frequent moving of capitals and rebuilding of of even of thrones depending on the circumstances behind the new king position of coming into become king. So to this end do objects you know that have left the country somehow become lost to the Burmese and this attachment no longer necessarily remains and its significance may not necessarily be interpreted the same way that others in different cultures may do so. Another complicating factor for repatriation within the Buddhist context is the concept of ownership. Lawyer Nazima Kamadine in an article addressing Sri Lanka and the cultural heritage and cultural heritage in a discussion about the bronze image of the goddess Tara in the British Museum collection she outlines key legal issues relating to ownership when western law meets the east and notes that under Buddhist tradition in Sri Lanka while the king owns all his kingdom he is only a custodian or guardian. Gregory Shopen who's an expert on Buddhist traditions has also addressed the role of ownership in Buddhism you know who does own the objects that are donated to temples and monasteries is there a clear legal chain of ownership between objects gifted to the Buddha who does not exist in a legal sense and custodians of a temple where the objects may have originally resided and again no case law has been established in this area. One factor that may promote the government to engage in repatriation in Myanmar is its role in heritage diplomacy a strategy that it's increasingly recognized as part of the diplomatic repertoire. With repatriation of cultural heritage the gestures may come at little real cost but can deliver significant benefits in terms of inter-country relations and this is an area which could be exploited by both foreign countries and Myanmar itself. However in light of current situation in Myanmar acts of repatriation will halt while an object might be part of a country's heritage who is the legitimate custodian who are we going to return anything to at the moment and would this be legitimizing the role of the current military regime. We also might even return to the question here of our museum collection safe and how do we keep on ensuring you know building of any sort of trust between people who are wishing to repatriate objects to Myanmar in this current situation which brings me actually to one of my concluding just a little anecdote here. I was actually directly involved in putting a person in Australia who was wanting to return a large collager and this is just an example that's actually in the Australian National Gallery of Australia's collection. It's not the work that I'm talking about and this woman they should collected this collager in Thailand in the 1960s which is not an uncommon story. It's a really fabulous work. We had got to the point where I'd contacted the National Museum in Napidor and the Director General of Archaeology and they'd confirmed that they would really love to see this piece returned to Myanmar and it was literally on the 2nd of February I was going to read the ambassador the day after the government had been sworn in to arrange these connections and of course in Myanmar coup happened. In speaking to the potential donor we of course it's there's no way we're going you know anything is going to go back to the country now even though the ownership of this object might relate much more broadly to the military regime anything we give back is being would be seen at this current time it could be used for political purposes but also could be seen as giving some legitimacy to the people in power. So this idea of ownership and repatriation it's a really is living sort of happening example in Myanmar at the present. There are certainly much more that can be said about repatriation and reparations in Myanmar in the complexities of their heritage there's still much we don't understand they said even understanding and appreciating and identifying what heritage means to the people in Myanmar still is something we need to really do. So and while uncertain I can all I can say in conclusion here in keeping with Myanmar's history and everything Myanmar it is complicated thank you. Thank you very much Charlotte for a wonderfully wide-ranging and illuminating presentation which really highlights the the sheer complexity of the situation the very specific issues that arise in them in terms of restitution to Myanmar and you raise all sorts of really important issues that I'm sure we can come back to later in the in the discussion. So just before I move on to to present Patcher's to introduce Patcher's presentation just a quick reminder to the audience to please put your questions into the Q&A box as we go along and we'll be looking at these towards the end. So we're going to turn now to Patcher's presentation which is a pre-recorded talk it lasts around 40 minutes or so unfortunately Patcher has not been able to present to us live today she's been in a very sadly she's been in a road accident but heroically she says she will be available for the discussion afterwards for the Q&A discussion afterwards but she may not be able to turn her camera on. So the title of Patcher's talk today is Plibats Reclaiming Heritage Social Media and Modern Nationalism and her blurb for her presentation she writes that she will look closely at contemporary repatriation requests for objects looted from Plibats in Thailand presently displayed in museums in the west. Her talk will trace recent developments in the repatriation issue where local activism and social media have shifted the balance for a more democratising process of restitution forwarded by the state government and it was the establishment of Sam Mook Sam Royol excuse my my pronunciation here in Thailand by a local group by a group of local historians which has generated a grassroots movement for advancing local and communal cultural identity in relation to the objects requested for return and since heritage is considered an embodiment of a glorious past local heritage ownership is an important aspiration for localised political social and economic developments particularly those located in the peripheral regions such as north eastern Thailand. Social media thus provides a powerful platform she argues for local communities to bolster the quest for repatriating and owning artefacts thank you very much Patcher and over to your presentation. I would like to start my talk off by thank you and the Luz and Pangya for this wonderful opportunity to participate in this project and the SOAS for organising this talk and the NUS Publication House for enabling this project to happen. So I'll be talking about essentially about how social movement has transformed our interaction with the wider audience particularly people who live on heritage sites which is my primary interest on how to make these communities more resilient so activities and art crime and restitution and awareness of heritage plays a large part into that and the internet for the past two decades have now become a focal point in how these communities ends up defining and interacting with historical objects and heritage in both within the community outside the community nationally and internationally. So internet activism began in the early 2000s with the development web and social media platform there were substantially low cost associated to participating in social movements and ability we think about it in the 1980s you need phone call people you need to print things you need to battle for newspaper you need manpower to kind of mobilise everyone and deliver ideas related to social movement now it's entirely possible to you don't have to pay or fight for that type of platform that way and it can immediately reach a lot of people depending on access scope and usage and interactions now with the development of that benefit obviously there were optimists and skeptics some people think of social movements on internet as opportunities to expand meaningful connections increase democratises opportunities to generate any type of movement um help movement emerge and mobilize so that's kind of the optimistic hypothesis but at the same time there were observations merging at the same time that you know this could really be um socially isolating and unsustainable uh if you think about it if you choose to engage you create a facebook group it would be only people within your social network could be friends friends of friends and friends of friends and it stops that normally it's very hard for internet to build up massive crowds um and sustain that particular crowd interest so that their criticism has built up to observations that um these kind of internet activism might just be microbialization and has um not so far shown real sustaining real world impact impact as when we compare it to kind of the the hard driven physical material social movement in the past now when we look at internet it's also important to kind of step back and try to understand how the internet and heritage interacts with that way of interaction it means it also reshapes by putting heritage on to the internet itself reshapes how we interact with heritage why it may widen access for usage and interaction um helps uh it allows us to visit historical paths in terms um in times of national and international lockdowns now it's possible to travel to these places but at the same time uh with access to that type of information uh debates such as ownership of you know these modeling uh the data on these heritage becomes contentious debates who owns it who benefits from it who has access to it uh and in what language and language barrier emerges out of that also um and you have uh issues like transforming symbolism how how things that were once defined as heritage uh being used in multiple different ways it's now possible uh to visit historical parks for youtubers videos and each and one of those youtube videos talking about different historical sites of visiting different sites will transform the meaning of heritage or the receiver uh perception of it um now well this is all great and uh comes with a lot of our kind of open ground for for thinking about how internet interacts with heritage it also leaves room for much of a larger gray market in gray area that we don't understand now the corners of this type of uh kind of open space but what we see even the last two decade is definitely the rise in antiquities trafficking and it comes with a set of things it's not just straight selling vending in traditional market settings that you used to see in the past it also brought about a lot of exchange of information within the people trading antiquities um and that allows individuals to step from being career academics or non-career academics into the realm of public figures and public intellectuals um people who within that particular network uh web network uh claim expertise and these are usually the people who operate uh pages or contents online um and obviously when you're interacting in the large area there's that problem of um kind of an echo chamber where you don't really get have information editing uh kind of exchange the real uh kind of checks and checks that usually happens with information um and it slips to to benefit unfortunately uh some destructions of heritage sites so with that in mind um i'm going to talk to us through this bigger question on what does it mean for interactions with repatriation and restitution which is the focus of my chapter in the book um first of all when we think about the internet uh within the scope of what we're talking about and in this case are we talking about fly but we have to first start drawing where the boundaries are and the boundaries in this discussion are shapes that particular interaction fly but is a movement that started on facebook it's a social media platform movement um so it's also limited to the population that has access to that particular social media network all the individuals who have set up the page and raise a campaign on it now that brings about with some very interesting aspects on how this movement was driven because it's so when it's social media it also immediately means that it's dependent on the group of people and scaling from groups of people that these individuals know or affiliated to that also subjects in how information transfer and information procurement or information translation then becomes part of that larger movement on this network of of boundaries to the web there's that aspect of information delivery that comes into that kind of the scope for these interactions happen so as we go into the story fly but emerge they merge a extensive kind of conflicting interests nuances tensions within the story itself and at the same time it also unravels the way objects the story of how objects leave places in its original location leave that location interacts with the local academics interact with the local population and enters the international waters and eventually reaches the hands of curators and writers who then proceed to write about them and then that information feeding right back into the hands of the locals 40 years later on for repatriation so we start the story off with kind of explaining a brakun chai horde supply but or brakun chai horde is associated to craftsmanship school which i'm going to flag that as contention uh part of a large kind of information debate that went on to understanding how this interaction of leaving and problematic how it highlights problematic aspects of how we interact with heritage uh in a sense right and it's it's a series of sculptures essentially uh it's a category given to a sculpture that appeared in the karate plateau between the seventh and the ninth century so it's associated to the sculptures you see on the left are their bronzes um avalokiteshara bronzes and um they were discovered sometime between 1961 and 1965 now during that time there was a regional conflict that drove extensive looting um development in economic development conditions in the area were conducive looting was done both as complementary added income um and also at the same time it's um it's also done out of subsistence uh a need uh dealers would go in uh who were affiliated to large uh the trading and powerful figure network um international military network they were in operating in that area um that were also collecting transporting and uh gathering uh these cultural um material culture in the area for both study and collection purposes so there was quite a bit of a growing interest in southeast asia demand um at that time and that drove kind of these objects leaving the place um so by about is one of those very dramatic cases where looting extended to a point where a report was written in 1964 where two fly about two temple the temple above that you see allegedly where the sculpture most of the sculptures came from uh was blasted with dynamite so that was how bad this was uh because locals were consciously looking for stuff and they thought things were in parts of the buildings and roofing there might be secret chambers so it got blown up um and the other reason it got blown up uh i will highlight later on has to do with kind of the heritage management aspect back then and so very much a problem uh and tension that we see developing in this particular case but um immediately after they were looted from the site um they were they were designed to to leave the country so they were taken to uh areas around Pimae and then smuggled out eventually uh via the uh ports in and areas in Dantaburi now problem um some of the hordes were intercepted by local authorities um in the process of preventing a district uh chief was shot dead uh uh by looters uh who who were transporting out uh large sculptures uh which uh fortunately were later on intercepted and now uh remained at the Bangkok National Museum so that allowed the local authorities to kind of conclude uh that these objects came from areas around we run with uh the rest of the individuals involved in that one single smuggling and that was the information level that they they had at least officially uh and then suddenly a lot of other stuff that left the country uh ended up appearing on the international market but for most of its time the debate on its provenance became a tension for many publication so once it left Thailand uh it immediately became very interesting sets of objects which then entered kind of into i won't get into the discussion on whether they're real or they're not they're copies they're forgeries or uh they could be past issues of something else or another but the discussion here is how the system handles uh and interactivity at these objects in terms of publications that were coming out at that time now the objects were treated as art and archaeological objects that were studied removed from context so discussions were on its art style its significance to religions move historical religious movement that happened around the 79th century uh different materials that were made in kind of aesthetics of the individual sculptures itself without much talk on the original site it wasn't until 1975 and that a series of photographs were were given by to by an art dealer um a named art dealer to a creator at museum in Denver Emma Bunker who then proceeded to um publish an article revealing that the sculptures itself came from Blybat area uh temple now uh Blybat isn't the only case of kind of this hype in interest in art and archaeology that drove this scope um an idea of studying objects and publishing on objects based on cataloging publication identifying certain places and just writing on its aesthetics and pieces without uh knowing the objects provenience uh so this is kind of the pre um processal archaeology kind of movement they merge uh but and it's still kind of going on um in both kind of professional publication to amateur historian archaeologist publication to um people working in private museums this type of publications of cataloging uh talking about about uh the shapes and forms and functions of the objects without really focusing or scoping uh on a particular location where man it was found where it was discovered uh but liquid loosely to the scope of pre and quarian gravity uh larger uh area now when Emma published this she made an argument of course obviously she was attacked for for working uh with an art dealer to procure those information but something with buttocks surrounding um Emma Bunker's publication uh defended a science school or that that she was saving uh these sculptures and information surrounding these sculptures otherwise these information would have been lost now um brew have come out to uh critique uh narratives not necessarily Emma but a wider series of scholarship that uh emerged before the 2000s this kind of of uh writing purely on the objects itself uh removing it from its its kind of provenance as rescue narrators and in that that kind of critique is that rescue narrators in the end serves no uh real kind of contextual build up in that what it does is that it ends up providing uh legitimization for identifying um that are good enough for the art trade but rarely building concretely to historical larger narratives um and it was kind of further that um by having these kind of of identification catalogs publication what ends up happening is um the academics then puts themselves into a condition where they become congenial bed felons people who actually help bolster sales auctions and exchanges of uh of these uh antiquities trade which may have left the country of origin or the place in um illegal or at least uh in modern terms legal framework uh wrong manner uh illegal manners and we see this that the more publication verifies when the bribed bakuanchai hord started emerging uh their attention the discussion uh before uh a lot of publication came out about it uh prices that's because of the debate people didn't know where it was from uh prices weren't high and with more kind of exhibits pieces cataloging publication that immediately led to huge escalation in prices with uh prices going between 40 000 and 60 000 and this is kind of contemporaneous counting in 2008 to up until to 250 000 and to 350 000 um in 2015 and the prices are so for these objects so why were looting so easy uh that brings into to this question what happens to when we we start leaving at this provenance this idea of context behind it leaves a lot of story of how the objects itself left the place and how the place have fared since then um in terms of developing we're interacting with that uh these objects and narratives so I went back and checked why looting was made easy and the identifiable cause is that um there were a lot of loopholes firstly in how the law uh the ancient acorn ancient monuments antiquities objects of arts and national museum in 1961 revised in 1992 uh scoped um antiquities as uh those of Thai origin which then allows them to be protected from trade and transport not those who that are classifiers non-thai now for objects like that those uh prakhon chai applied by the horde it leaves a lot of room for discussion obviously back then in 1960s 1970s when they were leaving uh the country it wasn't so clear there were writings that claim that they were from Cambodia there were writings that claim that um they weren't even from from this mainland south east asia and you have this kind of confused information which allows trafficker to kind of go into this discussion on um uh allow them to to actually uh pass through this framework whether they're smuggled or not um they're not checked secondly more and more importantly and likely had a case the lack of human resource and technical shortages in controlling imports and exports of antiquities uh it leaves a lot of antiquities uh vulnerable rising conflict at that time did not help also uh rural urban divide between heritage management and how heritage is handled there's also a lot of misconception of heritage management and ownership back then um and it was recently revised it's still under revision on who controls and who can actually develop heritage site so back then and up until uh recently in a lot of places where there are archaeological sites um local residents are under the impression that if an archaeological site or a significant archaeological site is found uh people would uh the authorities would come and confiscate their land and everything and take them everything away from them so it was considered bad even economically socially to be living near or within the proximity of um on heritage sites uh so that that kind of drives incentives to destroy these sites um and of course lastly problems of corruption and arbitrage particularly arbitrage in information related to um archaeological heritage and this comes even with obviously with that heightened demand in brakunshai horde um self and the large international markets small medium scale buyers kind of a loafer and um less than soft to be auction houses started looking for them and that leaves room for a lot of forgeries to be um kind of the institutional loopholes that we we work on and in terms of premise of uh ownership and how people use to think about heritage now repatriation movement in the past used to be academic led um it's mostly urban academics in uh with denari lintel it's really driven by a bank of base group um university students there were real street protests it's in the 1970s 1980s um a lot of the when a lot of um that demand was coming out mainstream media driven it has to become uh it was it came out by uh major newspaper uh which is still publishing and has helped publish on uh this particular social media movement but they're no longer the center stage of uh public uh mass media they are like in the past now and in a way that's because uh print media and big media companies itself are subjected to clicks so it's very different from the experience of opening newspapers with multiple columns that you can access nowadays as compared to accessing news article base that comes up on algorithm based on your interest so articles are really looking for clickbaits contents and algorithm will drive you towards contents which you have access before instead of newer uh topics so that's kind of how media has transformed now social media movement some mid-sam life on uh took root and really scaled up with uh a sosta b's auction of a uh by but uh horde uh as you see there in 2004 and it started picking up uh a lot of content so the contents creator were were doing this kind of pre uh 2015 even it was in the early 2000s where they were gathering network um and they were tracking down where each and um one of these sculptures are in the world um it was at the same time that a lot of international museums were beginning to digitize their content um and even in museums that didn't digitize their content the network was able to co-op in from ties who lived abroad who were affiliated to the network and that feedback right into uh page building up a page content and they formed this group came to call themselves some nuk sam loy on which translate roughly as the conscious towards the 300 so this came from albert labonez estimation of how many sculptures belonging to the private horde uh that were circulate circulating in the market um after his purchase um he was curator gmail museum at that time after that per the gmail's purchase from spainton sons in in london in 1972 so uh they are they are still trying to track down this collection both in thailand and and abroad but what it what became interesting is that for the first time this didn't happen out of academics that were based in bangkok neither did it start with academics that are based in major universities it's an amateur academic uh local co-groups are local historians in both karat and buri be buri lamb and within plight but uh park on chai uh district itself who are driving uh this movement and it was even further what's more interesting is we're driven by the village and community themselves that were living in the area and some of the other figures that have become the head informants and people pushing for the returns of these objects will actually dilute us in bold within um the the uh the looting that happened in the 1960s and the 1970s um a a volunteer system developed where people were tracking down there were people who they called themselves cyber warriors who went out to track down different groups uh museums that were were housing these these collections are both in the united states the young lady the lovely lady you see there on the right panel is kind of kind of showing her protests and they're protesting in front of the matinee new york and became real social uh media network with connections to uh with the kind of media outlets the formal media outlets kind of following contents that instead of them delivering contents from professional academics in university uh they weren't delivered uh it was the opposite it was delivering these information to them and it became really amazing because all these old men some in their late 70s 80s some in the 90s were coming out pointing out where they were finding things uh which what these sculptures look like they were identifying who uh the names of the individuals that were purchasing uh materials uh from them uh the people who have visited them looking scouting for uh for for information so this allowed us to uh it was possible for them to now with this interaction which never happened before usually you have to rely on police reports to construct you know evidence of looting was that possible to construct new affidavits uh for repatriation case based on uh verbal witnesses our living witnesses that were involved in the case who have records of being arrested for looting the site itself um and they uh integrate uh it also allows them to integrate local identity to repatriation provides checks on usage of heritage upon return and oral history added to the provenant story that is more than much ignored and what it did was it allowed um these collective oral history of what happened during the looting allowed the local scholars to construct a replica of where everything was uh based on interviewing different peoples in two villages uh where how the sculpt the the temple was set before its destruction and that's kind of my map of um those accounts compiled from uh my interaction with uh one of the local what this did uh so this movement I think I'm running out of time so I'll try to kind of quickly go through this story uh decentralizing heritage what it did is that it it's a reflection of how heritage governance is becoming decentralized now why interesting heritage I pointed out before that in the 19s before the millennium you know now happened uh Thailand and a large extent area around Korat was in a different kind of socio-economic setting this happened in a wider scale as different countries across Asia are becoming purely more prosperous the slave rise to more interest in cultural identity local identity tea and definitely heritage consumption so these aspects of wealthier Asia and regional areas then pushes this demand so you have more government driven uh local museum initiators with more one hour one more than 1400 non-state operated museums out across the countries people in Braibat themselves are hoping in Pakonchai are hoping that once these objects return they will be able to set up a large museum in their area to attract tourists and of course partially because the elders really believe that by selling the objects they are cursed for life uh their families are cursed they are complete they're going to be um impoverished that interaction of local belief then formulated this push towards demands of ways to um to repatriate the objects so it's in a way it's a rise of local pride and patriotism that developed out of this moreover uh we are also seeing rise in more kind of national wider media interests in uh pushing things out like the famous Siri Naki which became a driver of tourism in Isan area uh both from Bangkok and within uh the the localities different provinces itself so provinces like Buri Rum where where Pakonchai district is situated have been he's seeing increasing tourism um over the past decade so it's now become wealthiest province uh in the area but at the same time this new repatriation process creates a tension you have the state uh before you have the state where there's ministry is a foreign affair police authorities finance department university state's academy controlling the information then the students co-op into driving that passion for for social movement with the media kind of backing them up so information is controlled in that sense with this new group of new repatriation process where it's coming from amateur historians local historian immediately you have contention on perspective regarding what defines historicity of objects and places so social media allows that platform to be delivered where people are defining their own history in that sense and sometimes that history clashes with what is viewed as formal so uh synchronizing the two whether through social media publication local government's interest in managing heritage instead of the finance department um and particularly with the internet now access to international partners for those who can work in english some of them have taken the initiative to contact authorities in the united states so it's very interesting this means the whole repatriation process that used to be fired where you have the formulate a fed of it uh submit it uh have the embassy submit everything run through official bodies this process has been decentralized so you have ongoing challenges uh on how to streamline repatriation process so without organization in that sense the social media movement in somewhat way becomes a double wedge sword while it's garnered a lot of internet meat local um and domestic national interest at its height of social movement um it also had huge struggle pushing for centralized repatriation work and body to be done there are no manpower to actually put everything through repatriation which unfortunately is still very state to state process negotiation so so that problem still continues on a second level that tension between formal academics those who work in the finance department those who work in major universities those who work as um public figures local and intellectual historians operating from local area this conflicting publication of knowledge between what the page social media publishes and those who are schooled in art and archaeology it creates a um a new scope for debates where debates are diverted instead of discussing repatriation process regardless of hobbies for jury's fakes or or problems where where you normally that sorting out bit comes out later once things goes back to the country of origin um it becomes a confusion where straw man arguments emerge um and it becomes the focus of debate so a lot of the time scholars were arguing whether things represented certain religion and it had nothing to do with the repatriation process so this kind of diffuses the impacts of the social media it sold the legal framework and lastly it created a nasty collective action problem where um it became a struggle pain a quick to click process so so far it took the efforts by destiny it took efforts by destination countries to check for anti-money laundry and trafficking that thailand is getting some objects back unfortunately kind of streamlining making sure that brakunchai hord gets returned to thailand is still a struggle and a process ongoing which have now uh slowly come it is slowly coming together uh in parts of the government and the local go uh academics itself there's a present needs to arrange rearrange domestic and um generation of knowledge on repatriation frameworks and law uh which needs to come at into the discussion at some point at the moment it's like why do these museums have these objects so it's still a very stagnant narrative that's garnered to sensationalism based on the social media itself lastly um this leaves the question of mitigating for impacts of legacy of centralized heritage control because whether we like it or not this type of social movement this interest rising interest in cultural heritage that belongs to people in local area will continue to exist thank you thank you very much pacha for your very stimulating very detailed and stimulating presentation um i think you raise some very interesting issues earlier in your presentation about the role of the international art market in particular in designating objects as being as being valuable and also very interesting discussions of the impact of um social media and the importance these days of local activism in terms in in relation to these repatriation requests in in contemporary Thailand so it's very interesting to hear about these grass groups movements and it's clearly a very different environment to that uh described by charlotte in in Myanmar so thank you very much for your presentation raising all sorts of issues that i'm sure we can discuss in the last in the last part of this session so i'm going to move now on to ask um um to um respond if she can to those two presentations over to you thank you louise can you hear me well okay um thank you charlotte and pacha for the fascinating talks it is interesting to see some similarities between thai and Myanmar repatriation cases and first of all it can be seen that in the antiquities act in both countries gives authority to only one institution which is able to manage the national cultural heritage including ancient monuments and artifacts and in Myanmar this department of archaeology and national museum um thailand is a fine arts department therefore it seems that under these antiquities acts the calling for repatriation can only be perceived from these institutions and sickly as the national heritage management in both countries has been centralized by one government authority as pacha and charlotte has been mentioned has mentioned this and defining of the approve of so-called national heritage must be come from this come from them and has to be consistent to the national narrative and therefore in theory monitoring the national heritage that might be illegally brought to other countries is relied on these authorities however due to a lack of resource such as finance technology and stuff it is rarely to see these institutions to be active in doing so as we can see in that returning of the Pagan Buddha image is demonstrating in the charlotte article and banshee and objects that are described in melody's article that none of these repatriations started from the central authorities however the case of fly but bronze sculptures discussed in pacha's articles and she has presented before has suggested a new trend of public awareness and movement to our defining national versus local heritage in the era of social media in this discussion I will mainly focus on the context of thailand and will I think it's related to some part that that charlotte has part out before in my opinion it can be said that reclaiming fly but bronze sculptures has made a significant move for the local people to be aware of their cultural rights and to be able to participate in defining and managing their cultural and even the so-called national heritage as a request for a returning of the ancient bronze objects was initially driven from the locals including local scholars and communities rather than from the central authority which in this case the finance department I agree with pacha in that the social media is one of the main factors that makes the local voices louder and reinforce this movement to become more powerful however I would like to point out other two social and political contexts in thailand that could help us to understand the way how this social movement has been developed but first first of all in the 1997 constitution in which the power of central central government was decentralized and this 1997 constitution clearly states that the local administrations are authorized to safeguard conserve and protect the cultural heritage in addition the local people could also be participated in these activities as a result many of the local people sorry many of the cultural centers local museums provincial and district or event school museums for example which run by the local administrations have been increasingly established since the late 1990s however the problem is there is no clear definition that this term cultural heritage in the constitution means or includes the national heritage or not ironically in 1961 act of ancient monuments and antiquities which revised in 1992 has not been revised again to be consistent to this 1997 constitution therefore the fine art department is still the only institution that has authority over the national heritage and second apart from the constitution I would say due to the an effect of the modernization and economic development and since 1980s we can see the emergence of new social and cultural phenomena especially and increasing of cultural nostalgia in various communities across Thailand many communities seek to revive protect and even create their local or ethnic identities resulted in revival of the heritage sites as we can see everywhere of so-called hundred gear market floating market heritage building and so on in addition in this period we can also see an establishment of many private museums for example museum of ethnic uh museum of ethnic group city museum family museum toy fork museum and etc and so we can what we can say about this phenomena I think it's signifies of an expansion of public awareness and as being a Thai citizen and according to the 1997 institution they have their political and cultural rights to be able to tell what story narrative and heritage that is significantly meaningful for them and should be a representative for themselves or for their communities and of course they and of course they should be able to to have their own rights to participate in the cultural and national heritage management and in case of some some north samurai or movement although it started in 2016 by a group of local scholars and later the movement spread out and participated by the local communities and and the local authority as well I was surprised that the bronze sculptures appear at everywhere and in many events not just in the conferences and seminars that were held in Bangkok but in the region and more interestingly is the seminar was held by the bicycle club in the fly but ancient monument ancient monument as we can see before in patras presentation the sculptures also appeared in a local religious parade I think she she has that that that image in in her slide and there are at least three songs which were written regarding this reclaiming movement and there were sung in the mini concerts in the region so we can say that the fly but bronze sculptures are eventually incorporated into local identities and up until now it is unclear that if the fly but sculptures were successfully repatriated to Thailand where these objects should be kept or displayed or in terms of object biographies what story should be associated with these materials will the story of local movements be involved in that or just simple simply stays the fun arts department successfully brought them back so although the local communities and authorities have raised this issue among their groups the fun arts department has not been discussed with them yet but I think we will soon be an eyewitness of the negotiation as there is one successful reclaiming case between Thailand the US it is a stone lintel from the known monument and the calling for repatriation started from the local communities and so this comes to my the end of my discussion the spring returns back to you Louise. Thank you very much for your considerations and your commentary I understand but Pacha will now be happy to to make some comments on on what you've just said followed by Charlotte. Thank you so I just received a question on kind of process what is going on with law and how is Thailand working to to fill up that loophole I think I'm not for her wonderful add-on it's it's also fascinating because we did have a recent television show used that used at least what they think is a an image of a fly but sculptures featured in in kind of the major story plot so it's definitely appearing everywhere but at the same time I just kind of want to highlight that that this process of you know when you start demanding for repatriation and it reaches this kind of centralized state structure then you're met with this huge wall of how to kind of not just the law work but actually putting the work their feather bits um all that into a consistent case that you submit to countries where where these objects are so in terms of the the loopholes itself Thailand has been looking at ways to revise its its framework on and approaches on heritage unfortunately it still lacks people who can engage with material culture that doesn't belong to what at least the state the scope of the state knowledge that they consider it part of Thai art so that has been tricky um it's also left a very big gap where you get Chinese material material from the Middle East kind of filtering through being auctioned in Bangkok smuggled into Bangkok and leaving Bangkok undetected or even with detection people don't really know what to do with them the cultural people within our academy people within the government let alone authorities that are periphery involved like the police or the customs office so it's really been a challenge in terms of of blocking uh even with the legal framework implementing uh has been a huge issue it's also um Thailand has also introduced uh is considering uh revising its position on the 1970 UNESCO convention so but bearing that in mind uh even with the convention sign on it will still cannot use the convention to address anything that goes out before signing on to the convention so we'll have to still rely on kind of the bilateral street um agreement and negotiation framework which is on top of that as I pointed out uh before we um it's still severely lacking kind of the human resource to do that just to kind of add a bit on on the plus side of this um recent interest and kind of growing consciousness in in cultural heritage um not only uh would have marked it a point out a really good basis for kind of a 1997 constitution what has built up from there is the 2001 and one act on decentralizing our heritage management which has helped places like uh certain museums in locally Dunstan Museum from organizing their own kind of heritage working with state and fad parties to set up uh these museum collections um working with academics as well but it's also still very limiting and um what it has done interestingly is that it has pushed the burden of um kind of curating not not not just curating but storing and constructing facilities on to local government bodies so there's a bit of attention on if the central authorities are custodians of these material and the local bodies are legally borrowing management from these legal custodians in the central authority then who pays to set up all these facilities these museums and organization so there's an ongoing tension and um it's unfortunately something that um while the social media movement can pick up um and create sensations for people don't like to go into trivial details which make things uh which actually is the important part in materializing large project or development projects so it's still you know the content focus is still very much we want these objects back instead of why don't we have the people are working or why don't we have expertise to address uh growing uh looting problem or growing problems in terms of uh how the FedEx vids themselves they're very hardly it's still voluntary basis where people um different parties have to go in volunteer to gather documentations instead of uh you have these meetings that keeps going on once twice per year discussing repatriation but no work gets really done in between so that's still kind of the challenging part and loopholes in the process unfortunately the fine arts department do not have a central authority or people on the desk working purely on repatriation and looking at looting problems okay you're handing over to me now that's fine thanks patcher um yes just in response to those comments um it's an interesting point looking at the central authority in both countries um and how that sort of works in practice and I've posed the highlights for me which has been for quite some time of course is how far behind Myanmar is with managing issues to do with hierarchy within government and of course and its distance between what's happening on the ground and with the public and I think we are all well aware that you know issues of trust are of paramount importance in Myanmar and so in terms of heritage management it's such a hierarchical structure um that even now you know that any position of trying to engage with local people on the ground and trying to generate ideas and interests in what is their heritage but have those voices heard in any sort of central arena is really quite difficult um I can't help but sort of look back on some of those early post-independence years where in some of the um government reporting you know there's a very conscious effort of trying to engage with the very the multitude of you know ethnicities and cultures within Myanmar and within the cultural um sphere they were actually starting to map what was happening in terms of cultural activities in the different ethnic areas unfortunately of course um they're in a situation where they have got a very dominant ethnic group and the Burma which are over 60 of the population and so and in recent years there's been such a sort of hiving off of or even a more um you know I suppose increased gap between trying to understand other people's cultures in a sort of a way we will consider more even handed a sort of approach um I think there's areas um as I said it's very patchy across Myanmar there are areas where people are are interested in their local heritage um there's some very um couple of very active heritage um local heritage trusts um but that has really emerged out of activities to do with UNESCO engagement also with sort of international experts who have been supporting activities there um and I did sort of note this idea of like how do you get things known to to central government and promote some of these ideas of repatriation of material that they may well know is overseas or in private hands and that's we'll come back to that Q&A question later um and part of this problem here you know is again it's an incredibly hierarchical structure within and the central point of contract within contact within the ministry of religious affairs and culture and the department of archaeology and museums um that you know without that sort of trust building um and even just the understanding of sort of more established international procedures for these activities it's very difficult still to get local people to engage in what we can saw more contemporary um heritive practices just one thing on that new into um the law the antiquities law they introduced in 2015 they actually are going to paying money to local people who you know farmers who dig up objects in fields and you know want to hand them over you can actually hand them over to the government and they will pay you money um that is actually you know quite a a really good step forward in a way of trying to stop the looting activities but of course it's certainly not stopping everything um happening and as I said really is about this lack of transparency that's happening within um government um I also just feel too um with this sort of issue of trust there's still a lot of fear within um the people working in these fields and for them to say if for someone to suggest an activity to do with repatriation the you know political implications if it didn't work or it caused trouble with a another country that fallout does come back down on that poor person who started it rather than anyone else up the chain taking responsibility so there's an awful lot of um work to be done um and I'm really interested to hear what's happening in Thailand because you know that will slowly filter through um uh to neighboring Myanmar but they said they've got a long way to go thanks very much Charlotte for your comments I'm I'm conscious of time um we've only got five or so minutes left and we have a um a question in the Q&A box which I think you were quite happy uh to respond to it's from Jessica Wiseman and it's um to Charlotte and it says what is your perspective on the private collections that exist in Myanmar which include many objects acquired illegally I'm thinking particularly about the collection of Ukin Shui which is or at least was in the process of being legitimized as a museum is there any value in advocating for internal repatriation from elite collectors back to the communities from which these objects were taken and do you see any risks in legitimizing such collections yes this is um this has actually been a subject of um quite a lot of debate and I think there are people on sort of other sides I mean I'm aware of the I know this I've seen this collection um Ukin Shui who's very you know made a lot of money in Myanmar um he's built this amazing museum and yet it's a really conundrum because under the current they said this 2015 law he could be he's legally meant to be um declaring all of the objects he has that might be over a hundred years old um they're meant to be registered um with the state and any transfer of ownership to somebody else it's possible but you have to register that transfer and indicate how much you're paying for those objects um our concern has always been that the person who will first get prosecuted under these acts is going to be the local antique dealer and not someone like um Ukin Shui and that is only going to also reinforce this lack of trust within administration and authority um in terms of what you do with these collections the infrastructure within Myanmar cannot cope with the material um he's actually generally managed to put together you know team that's of people who are have been um trained overseas um they run it's been run as a sort of a really good private museum um it is transparent in that sense you know there's access to collections I mean he's run runs tours for the public so there is a level of degree of accountability there that that material is known and it is available for people to see um I suppose the um you know and he has the flexibility to create a museum and displays without all of the bureaucratic bureaucratic headaches that go with um Myanmar's profession of public institutions um honestly it's it's just I won't even kind of begin to go in with um to some of the difficulties and getting simple things done um within those systems um so I think it is at the moment within the Myanmar system there is a place for something like this providing that transparency is there um because he has the resources to look after the collections well in a way honestly that the public system doesn't thanks very much for that Charlotte I think we are running now out of time and we probably need to to wrap up um so it just remains for me to say a huge thank you to our speakers today for their contributions for their very stimulating contributions and also to thank everybody who's asked questions today and also the audience um in general for attending thanks very much and uh good bye bye thank you thanks