A sign at the entrance to the Angkor Conservation Office (ACO) in Siem Reap, Cambodia, requests all visitors to leave their weapons at the gate.
On three occasions in the last decade, this request was spectacularly ignored. In 1992 for instance, more than 100 men shot their way into the compound with machine guns and made off on foot with 21 priceless statues from the famous nearby temples of Angkor. They had been removed to the ACO to protect them from the looters who have consistently targeted the temples in recent years.
"In Cambodia, only the police are supposed to have guns," explains In Phally, who has been working in the research department of the ACO for 20 years. "But the truth is that everyone has one - including me." We are sitting under palm trees in the conservation compound, newly-opened jack fruit laid out on the seat between us, already browning in the intense afternoon heat.
The ACO is a large, dusty compound on the edge of Siem Reap, a series of sprawling warehouses full of treasures that contain some of the world's best examples of classic Khmer sandstone art. Many of these were recovered from looters, discovered at the Thai border while they were being smuggled out.
Stone artefacts from Angkor are highly prized by collectors around the world, but very few ever turn up for auction at Christie's or Sotheby's, as they must be accompanied by a certificate of provenance to be legally acquired. Hence the international black market in looted artefacts from Cambodia, most of which are trafficked through Bangkok in Thailand.
At the ACO, there are scores of recovered Buddha heads, the most portable target of all for looters; lintels depicting the beautiful stylised heavenly nymphs called apsaras; rows of pedestals containing only feet; torsos lying on their side, from which heads have been hacked; pieces of ruined panels laid together like giant jigsaws, which were cut up with power tools into five or six smaller pieces for easier transportation. At one time, a popular method of smuggling artefacts by road involved burying them deep in containers of stinking fish.
The Temples of Angkor, the most famous of which are Angkor Wat, Bayon and Ta Prohm, were built between the ninth and 15th centuries for the Khmer kings and span an area of roughly 40sq km. Abandoned to the jungle for centuries and then inaccessible through war, it is only in the last decade that tourists have begun to arrive and looting has become commonplace.
Although Cambodian artefacts are particularly sought after, much of southeast Asia is plundered by looters. Dr Neil Brodie of the Illicit Antiquities Research Centre at the University of Cambridge, England, has written widely on the subject. He confirms that looted antiquities are worth billions of dollars internationally, but an exact figure is impossible to come up with, given the secretive nature of trafficking.
Din Ing is one of the heritage guards employed by the state-run Apsara Authority to deter looters. Ing has been assigned to help guard the Gallery of a Thousand Buddhas in Angkor Wat itself, the most visited and famous of all the temples. He waves his cigarette in the direction of the adjoining rambling corridors, where seated and standing Buddhas have the sacred orange cloth draped around their torsos. Every single one is missing their head. "They first started to disappear in 1975," he explains, through our translator and guide, Sok Vuthy.
There is evidence of looting everywhere. Headless Buddhas. Missing carved lintels. Sections of bas-relief cut out of walls. Panels with central pieces removed. Defaced apsaras. Missing walls.
Archaeologist Dara Phoeung graduated two years ago from the Royal University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh, and now works for the state, helping to excavate sites in the Siem Reap region. As night falls and the cicadas increase their collective thrumming, he sits over a Coca-Cola in the hotel garden and talks about looting.
As part of his course, Phoeung went on regular field trips. He recalls one to Kulen Mountain, the most important place of Buddhist pilgrimage in Cambodia, a day's journey from Siem Reap, and which also contains the site of an ancient and important pottery kiln. "When we arrived, we found people digging. There were plates and bowls everywhere." How did he know they weren't fellow archaeologists? Phoeung laughs politely. "All the archaeologists know each other. The people in the countryside are so poor. They have nothing. They were there looting. We knew it and they knew it."
The temple OF Beng Mealea is some 70km from the main complex of temples clustered round Angkor Wat. It's a hot, bumpy ride on potholed roads, the most of a day's drive from Siem Reap, and inaccessible by car in the wet season. Being remote, deep within the jungle and mined - there are six million unexploded mines in Cambodia - it was off limits to tourists until a couple of years ago. Like other temples, particularly Banteay Chhmar, near Sisophon, and Preah Khan, near Kompong Thom, Beng Mealea was consistently targeted by looters in the last decade. The main Angkor complex receives thousands of visitors every day: it's a very busy day for Beng Mealea if 60 people show up.
Kim Ky, who lives in the nearby village, knows our guide, Vuthy, and joins us as we climb though a tiny opening in a wall - the only entrance. We scramble over the immense blocks of the temple, lying jumbled up like giant surreal Lego, and overhung by the centuries-old silkwood trees that shut out the sky and are steadily destroying all the foundations.
Ky leads us up over broken walls, where we perch high up among fallen masonry. "Look," he says, pointing to a dislodged stone panel which once contained a beautiful, intricate carving of a goddess. It's beautiful no longer, since the carving has literally been defaced; a blank emptiness where the face once was. Ky explains how looters first remove the surrounding blocks with dynamite, and then attempt to get the decorated panel out with power tools, hammers and chisels. The piece is often cut up into small pieces so it can be carried away more easily. "They could not get it out themselves, so they ruined it so nobody else could steal it later," Ky says. This deliberate destruction of a failed theft is widespread and horribly usual.
Ky also shows us what was once a magnificent carved lintel, depicting a three-headed elephant and lotus flowers, which is ruined by crude hacking and gouging. This piece was to be a loot-to-order but the attempt failed, as the piece was too big to get out without dismantling the wall above it. A dealer in Thailand had offered a local man 5,000 baht (€100) to get it for him.
How does Ky know this? "Because," he explains with simplicity, "the offender lived in the same village as me and he told me one night when he got drunk."
The man who attempted to steal this piece - a former Khmer Rouge activist and well-known looter - is now dead. He was killed by persons unknown who were lying in wait for him on his way back from the Thai border after making a delivery. All his money was stolen.
The river of a Thousand Lingas at Kobal Spien is another couple of hours' drive from Beng Mealea. You trek for an hour up a mountain in the jungle, swatting mosquitos and drinking lots of water. It is very quiet. As you climb farther up, exquisite carvings of Hindu gods begin to appear, light-mottled by the trees, carved into the rocks that flank a river. This whole area, a sacred 10th-century site, was rediscovered only in 1995.
The centrepiece of the River of a Thousand Lingas is in a small clearing, where two ancient carved boulders face each other across a pool of water. Until two years ago, despite being a millennium old, the carvings remained perfect. Today, there is a scooped-out hole on one boulder, where the head and torso of the god Vishnu once were. Opposite, the body of goddess Lakshmi is now headless and its torso ruined by clumsy chisels. Four gods on the same boulder were defaced the same night.
Imagine waking up one morning and finding out that thieves had used power tools to remove the famous triple spiral from the kerbstone at Newgrange, leaving the rest of it behind, ruined forever. This is what's happening to Cambodia's heritage - except it's a reality, and it's on a much bigger scale.
Two years ago I met someone who had been living in Thailand for several years. He put me in touch with a friend of his, an antiques dealer in Bangkok, who agrees to talk to me about looted Khmer artefacts on the understanding that I do not name him. "Bangkok is still the main centre for trafficking antiques. There are many powerful people involved in it," he says, over iced tea in his shop. "These people put a lot of barriers between themselves and the person who buys the artefacts to protect their identity."
The dealer explains how loot-to-order works. A wealthy private collector - usually from the US or Singapore - decides what piece of Khmer art he wants. A frieze of apsaras, perhaps. A carved lintel. Or a depiction of a particular god, such as the Vishnu that was looted from Kobal Spien two years ago. He approaches a dealer in Bangkok and the word goes back to Cambodia. The actual looting is done by local people. The average monthly wage in Cambodia is €18. He thinks they receive no more than €100 for a job, and nothing at all if they botch it. The dealer then passes on the artefact to the collector. Heads are the most popular, fetching about $30,000 (€22,537), but a coveted piece can cost 10 times as much: as much as the collector is willing to pay.
Until two years ago, trade in looted Khmer artefacts was openly carried on at River City Mall, a four-storey shopping complex in Bangkok selling antiques and reproductions. Then the Thai police raided the mall, confiscated artefacts and arrested a dealer "to show the international community they were doing something" as the dealer wryly observes, and it all went underground again.
The dealer directs me to one of the antiques shops at River City Mall, a discreet shop displaying exquisite bronzes, glass and mounted Buddha heads. The owner is there when I go in.
Just to see what will happen, I walk straight over to the owner, hold out my hand, and tell him his shop has been recommended to me by a friend of my American businessman husband. And what is the friend's name, he shoots back instantly, smiling but keen-eyed. Oh, I can't remember, my husband passed on the recommendation, and he didn't want to come shopping . . . For more than an hour, I wing it. I am, I tell him, looking for a genuine piece of Khmer art. I have a budget of $90,000 (€67,611). I would quite like a head. We talk about antiques, Ireland, Bangkok, the famous Oriental Hotel (where I say I am staying), various styles of Khmer art. Then he takes a key out of his pocket, opens the door of his back room, and invites me in.
In the room is a leopard's head and two large 10th-century Khmer statues. One is in the Pre Rup style and has a horse's head. The other is Bakheng style and has the four-faced head of Brahma. They are stunning. They look genuine. They are offered to me for $300,000 (€225,369) apiece.
Rosita Boland and Frank Miller's trip to Cambodia was funded by the Development Education Unit of Development Co-operation Ireland
This article and an extended gallery of Frank Miller's photographs are available here www.ireland.com/focus/cambodia
