Culture Under Attack (Imperial War Museum)
Yesterday I went to the excellent, if rather jading, Culture Under Attack exhibition at the Imperial War Museum. I learnt about instances of the wilful destruction of cultural heritage as an act of war or oppression, from the iconic such as the detonation of the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan to the astoundingly unfamiliar such as the Nazi 'Baedeker Raids' aimed at bombing "every building in Brita in marked with three stars in the Baedeker Guide" - a disturbing example of how one man's love of culture can be turned into a weapon against culture a few generations later (Baedeker's Great Britain was published 1897) Among the most poignant things was viewing the historic acts of wreckage as ever-more details emerge of the ongoing 'culture-cide' in the Xinjiang Uygur 'Autonomous Region'. CNN had broadcast footage that very morning concerning the mass destruction of Uighur Muslim cemeteries , including an interview with