When the Cemetery Becomes Political: Dealing with the Religious Heritage in Multi-Ethnic Regions

Abstract

Published in 2020, When the Cemetery Becomes Political: Dealing with the Religious Heritage in Multi-Ethnic Regions, is volume 14 of the Schriften des Instituts für Interdisziplinäre Zypern-Studien series (University of Münster, Germany). The volume gathers 10 papers presented over three conferences between 2017 and 2019 (one in Münster in 2017 and two in Nicosia in 2018 and 2019) on the topic of religious heritage in multiethnic regions. The book is arranged in four sections, each representing a different geographical region: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cyprus, Greece, and Lebanon.The first section focuses on Bosnia and Herzegovina and consists of a single paper by Ž. Tunić titled, “The Meaning of Bones in Post-conflict Societies.” Tunić’s paper directs our attention to the paradoxical discrepancy of bones as both subject and object and the ethical dimensions of forensic archaeology and bio-historical anthropology, especially when used in investigations of genocide and crimes against humanity. Tunić emphasizes the dangers of using scientific methods to objectify bones as evidence that can be used for different, often conflicting, political purposes, while on the other hand their treatment as apolitical subjects runs the risk of trivializing ethnic/religious conflict, war crimes, and associated atrocities, as in the case of the Yugoslav Wars. Furthermore, her paper provides valuable insights regarding the sensitivities of the deceased persons’ relatives: how achieving justice through legal means and with the use of scientifically derived evidence may in fact expose them to reliving painful violence, and what it means for them having to negotiate their emotions vis-à-vis their religious beliefs and funerary practices, as in the case of Muslim victims and Sharia law. Tunić ends her paper drawing on a powerful metaphor of beauty over evil with an image of blue butterflies and wormwood plants on sites of mass graves, which she states is just a “poetic image” far from the forensic truth. She cautions that in attempting to ascribe meanings such as this to the evidence, one has to be careful not to undermine its brutal reality (23).The second section of the book focuses on Cyprus (five papers), with a strong emphasis on religious heritage. Theodosios Tsivolas presents the legal complexities of addressing Cyprus’s divided religious heritage since the 1974 events that led to the geographical and ethnic division of the island. His paper examines the legal discrepancies in terms of both international laws and domestic legislation while he focuses on three major issues that he poses as questions. The first issue concerns the legal definitions of “heritage” and “cultural property,” which, in his view, are both incomplete notions relying upon other nonlegal disciplines (history, art, archaeology, ethnography) “in order to define in each and every case their true content” (28). He argues that while “property” refers mainly to movable or immovable objects (sites, structures, or objects), “heritage” is a broader and more abstract/ideal notion encompassing both material and nonmaterial elements (oral traditions, rituals, sacred landscapes). While the Antiquities Law, established by the British in 1905 with several amendments since then, recognizes as antiquities religious objects and sites of all religious groups that are historically represented on the island (Christian, Muslim, Jewish), such objects can be declared monuments only after the prior consent of the respective religious authority in charge of them (29). At the same time, the law provides that duly declared monuments can still be used by worshippers for religious purposes. Also, the Antiquities Law and its scope of protection of religious monuments and sites has been broadened by incorporating international legislation ratified by Cyprus, like the 1972 UNESCO World Heritage Convention. The legal status of Cyprus’s religious heritage and how it corresponds to international legislation is the second question that Tsivolas addresses in light of the complexities of a post-1974 triparty divided property (assets located within the government-controlled part of the island, assets located in the north and occupied area, and assets found internationally through illegal trafficking). He argues that while the first group of assets is governed by domestic law, the two other groups rely on international laws (such as the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, humanitarian laws such as the 1948 Genocide Convention, and the World Court) that are unfortunately inadequate to deal with the reality of an occupying military force and an elaborate crime network involved in antiquities dealing (30–32). The paper ends on a more positive note when Tsivolas examines the third and final question of the legal ramifications of religious heritage and religious freedom. He claims that religious heritage (churches, mosques, synagogues, and cemeteries) can be protected and preserved adequately only if the corresponding religious communities are free to use/access them to perform ceremonies or any other religious manifestation (32–33). According to Tsivolas, the European Court of Human Rights has the legal authority to ease restrictions on access and facilitate striking “a balance between the religious demands of the interested parties, the public safety, as well as the preservation of the original character of the specific religious site in question” (33).The next paper by T. Kruse focuses on the fate of the religious heritage of the northern part of Cyprus after 1974 and how it is perceived by international organizations such as UNESCO, international media, and the official Turkish-Cypriot and Greek-Cypriot positions. The paper begins by providing important background on the sociohistorical development in Cyprus after 1960 that culminated in the 1974 military operations and Turkish occupation of the northern part of the island. It then continues with an analysis of the first examination and report undertaken by UNESCO in 1975/1976 on the impact of these events on the island’s religious heritage, based on the observations of the organization’s appointed Advisor for the Cultural Heritage of Cyprus, Jacques Dalibard. The paper presents the Dalibard report as a highly controversial document, with Dalibard himself stating that his findings were modified and misrepresented in the official publication by UNESCO, which underplayed the destruction by the Turks of the religious heritage in the northern/occupied part of the island to maintain neutrality in the conflict. Nevertheless, the report emphasized how destruction of antiquities is used as political propaganda and concluded that “both sides were responsible for their share of cultural property destruction” with “major destructions and problems in the occupied area” (37–38). International media hardly paid attention to the plight of religious heritage in the northern part of the island, most likely due to the mandatory monitoring of the area by Turkish forces, making it difficult for journalists to access impacted areas. Kruse singles out J. Fielding’s 1976 article in the St. Petersburg Times (Florida), which provides a report on the destruction of churches and cemeteries during unofficial visits to 26 villages that were inhabited by Greek Cypriots prior to 1974. While the official guided tours for the international press arranged by the Turkish forces aimed at underplaying any actions of violence against Greek-Cypriot religious heritage, Fielding was able to report first-hand observations on the widespread destruction of cemeteries and churches (38–40), which were also confirmed by eyewitnesses and by Dalibard. His article raised a great deal of interest, and it raised equally many questions regarding the “obviously suppressed” by the UNESCO Dalibard report (40). Kruse’s paper continues with a discussion on the position of other international organisations, such as the Council of Europe and the United Nations Human Rights Council, especially regarding restricted access to places and objects of worship, pilgrimage, and other places of religious and cultural significance, such as cemeteries, by both the Turkish-Cypriot and the Greek-Cypriot sides. Even though religion itself played no major role as a cause for the events of 1974, it has been highly politicized by both sides in the Cyprus conflict, with detrimental consequences to the religious heritage of the island. While the Christian heritage of the island is not restricted to Greek Orthodox churches and cemeteries (Kruse refers to the impact on the Maronite community in the north of the island), it is obvious that ethnicity is the main dividing factor when considering the island’s religious heritage: the Turkish-Cypriot community representing Muslim heritage and the Greek-Cypriot community representing Christian heritage. Although looting, plunder, vandalism, and desecration are recognized as being systematically organized, there has been a general avoidance by international organizations to point the finger at those responsible for these actions. Also, external influences, such as the religious policy of the Republic of Turkey and increasing attempts to Islamize a traditionally secular Turkish-Cypriot community are of concern. Kruse concludes that the only way to protect this divided heritage is with bilateral discussions and attempts on “the restoration and preservation of religious sites and monuments of both communities at a broad level, which would finally allow the unrestricted use of these sites by their rightful owners” (44).The Islamization of occupied Cyprus is explored further in the paper by P. Savvides, which also looks at the evolution from humble, inconspicuous masjids (as the traditional local identifier of Muslim religious space) to mosques with the addition of minarets and the creation of new, foreign, Saudi-designed and financed mosques in the last decade, severely impacting the ethnic and cultural identity of the occupied area (62–105). Like Kruse, Savvides argues that politics is strongly connected to these changes, which he sees as having irreversibly impacted the religious landscape of the northern part of the island, a result of intentional Turkification and Islamization. The politics extend to such actions as converting churches to mosques almost immediately after the 1974 occupation, adding minarets to their existing architecture as visible markers from a great distance. Supplemented in recent years by new mega-mosques, such religious markers are foreign to Turkish-Cypriot cultural traditions. Savvides refers to them as “political engineering” with no connection to “the spiritual needs of the secular community” (84). Although a significant proportion of the Turkish-Cypriot community opposes such mainland interference, Turkey’s financial and political influence is far too great to oppose.The last two papers in the Cyprus section of the book focus on the politics associated with the restoration of Greek religious sites and cemeteries and access to them by Greek Cypriots in the occupied territory. Lisa Dikomitis and V. Argyrou provide an anthropological analysis of the political significance of churches and cemeteries in the Greek villages that are now in the control of Turkish forces and present the Greek-Cypriot refugees’ attempts to restore them as “political acts that seek to re-establish symbolically Greek (Cypriot) ownership and prevent further Turkification” (108). Their paper demonstrates how, since 2003 when refugees were able to return for day-visits to their villages for the first time in twenty-nine years, such border crossings are perceived differently by the two refugee communities. In contrast to the Turkish-Cypriot refugees who normally make border crossings for more practical reasons such as shopping or casual day trips, Greek-Cypriot refugees perceive their crossings as pilgrimages, undertaking repetitive and symbolic rituals, mostly performed in their ancestral villages’ cemeteries and religious sites, namely churches and monasteries (113). Such visits are highly emotional events, with various politics of crossing (or not crossing) the border impacting on the individuals’ choices. United in the conviction that the border is an illegal boundary, Greek Cypriots choose to either cross the border once or on a regular basis, or never at all (113–14). The authors of the paper describe these visits by Greek-Cypriot refugees as ritual performances involving the caretaking of cemeteries and churches, lighting candles, praying, and the like (119). These rituals are also symbolic as the religious sites of their ancestral villages are perceived by them as an extension of the family home to which they no longer have access. As the sites have no religious meaning to the present residents (in fact, if they are not intentionally destroyed or misused, they are most certainly neglected), regular visits and the performance of rituals, including the payment of local caregivers to protect them, is most important in securing claim to their ownership. One cannot ignore the symbolism behind these actions, especially with regard to cemeteries, which traditionally “have never been favourite places for Greek Cypriots, and in villages in particular are often neglected” (126). In fact, cemeteries as well as the dead buried in them have acquired a special status as “political actors” by both sides in Cyprus’s continuous ethnic conflict (128). The same can be said also for sites of pilgrimage, such as the church and monastery of St. Barnabas, one of the most important religious sites for Greek Cypriots, which was appropriated for a museum by the Turkish-Cypriot administration in 1991 (132–55). The paper by T. Stylianou-Lambert and A. Bounia focuses on the intercommunal conflict of the site as a religious or secular space. While the Turkish-Cypriot argument is that of stewardship and a demonstration of goodwill in the conservation and preservation of Cyprus’s Christian heritage, the Greek Cypriots view the museum as proof “of the purposeful and continuous cultural destruction of Christian religious sites, as propaganda tools, or as spaces that are temporarily ‘out of order’ due to the Turkish occupation” (140). The authors interviewed members of the Women of St. Barnabas group of Greek-Cypriot Orthodox pilgrims to the site, who reject the institutional power of the museum and refuse to pay the entrance fee. While the museum staff is aware of this and does not attempt to stop the women from accessing the site to perform their Christian rituals, some of the women are mindful that such access is volatile, and at least one woman withdrew her interview in fear of losing that right. It would be interesting to know what Turkish-Cypriot visitors, or foreign tourists who visit the museum and observe these rituals, think about the dual significance of the site, or how the museum staff feels about their authority being undermined by the Greek-Cypriot worshippers. Unfortunately, the authors were not given permission to conduct research inside the museum or to question personnel, so their data were collected primarily by telephone and not at the site (145).The only paper from Greece in Section III is on the gradual and systematic destruction of Thessaloniki’s Jewish cemetery, primarily enabled by the Germans during World War II and continued over time by various (local) actors. Leon Saltiel begins his paper with the destruction of the cemetery by the Nazis in 1942, singling out this event as unique, considering how other large urban Jewish cemeteries across Europe survived the Holocaust as the Germans did not attempt to systematically destroy them. In the case of Thessaloniki, the Germans “accelerated developments that had been in motion for decades,” acting as the enablers when they responded to local pressures and demands by the local Greek-Christian population and its leaders (160). These pressures included attempts to reconfigure the city’s urban plan, especially after the fire of 1917, by “ignoring the centuries-long physical imprint made on the city by Jews and Muslims” (160). Part of the plan was to move the cemeteries outside the city limits, impacting mostly the centuries-old Jewish cemetery, which was the largest cemetery within the city. Despite protests by the Jewish community and its prominent leaders against the removal of the cemetery, the Metaxas government passed a law in 1937 that gave part of the cemetery to the newly established University of Thessaloniki. The law marked the beginning of the end for the cemetery, with the largest destruction overseen by the Germans after local pressures for complete expropriation of the land. The municipality of Thessaloniki fully financed and organized the labor for the removal and destruction of the monuments and burials that began on December 6, 1942, and lasted for two weeks while Greek archaeologists cataloged a few of the tombstones with Greek and Latin inscriptions. In the meantime, a race to acquire the destroyed tombstones as building materials ensued, with the authority in charge (the office of the General Governor of Macedonia) under the supervision of the German military headquarters approving requests by various interested parties (including the municipality, private and state contractors, foundations, and institutions, as well as the Greek Church [169–77]). Apparently, the local Greeks responded positively to the removal of the cemetery and the urban renewal plan to beautify the city with the expansion of the central park and the erection of public buildings and monuments. What happened subsequently was a struggle between state and municipality over the ownership of the land, with the state ultimately winning the title (169). Saltiel’s paper is a fine example of the complexities at the convergence of a crisis involving occupation and genocide by a foreign force and nationalism incited by local prejudice and self-interest.Moving to the final section of the book, the politics associated with religiously plural societies are highlighted through three papers focusing on Lebanon and its decades-long intercommunal conflicts and continuous efforts for peace. The paper by Elie Al Hindy has a broader focus, questioning the efficacy of western-style democracy and secularism in providing a unified national identity for plural societies in general, and especially for those founded on religious pluralism. He argues that secularism relies heavily on the foundations of a strong national identity and cannot work in places where religion, rather than ethnicity, is the main form of identity. He presents Lebanon as an area inhabited by 18 different, officially recognized religious groups that “may very well qualify to be defined as different nations, in the sense of having different characteristics and values, a different history, and differing aspirations that are reflected to a large extent in their political behaviour and choices” (191–92). His paper is quite pessimistic in presenting the stark reality of an ongoing conflict that cannot be solved by adopting traditional democratic principles such as secularism. One of the most plausible of three solutions he offers is the rejection “of the concept of ‘nation-state’ and search for another concept that could help to unify all citizens living within one border” (191). To this end, he sees the role of religious leaders as being paramount in fostering tolerance and a peaceful co-existence through interreligious dialogue and a sense of community assisted by constitutional guarantees and international support and protection (192–93).The paper by Ziad Fahed continues the discussion with the analysis of one model for a peace-building process utilized in the north of Lebanon, which deploys the power of religious belonging and identity and engages different religious communities in a positive way. Like Hindy, Fahed argues for a solution to the intercommunal conflict through the agency of religion and religious leaders who can act as peace-builders. By creating a network of religious leaders in Tripoli who encourage interfaith experiences, the project successfully connects worshippers and believers from different religious groups through attendance of services and prayers in the churches and mosques of the “others.” These experiences help in demolishing perceived stereotypes and promoting a culture of peace vs. a culture of fear (199–202).The final paper of the Lebanon section examines the process of reconciliation and the associated politics between the Druze and Christian communities in southern Mount Lebanon through the return of the Mountain Christians’ dead to their villages after their displacement during the 1977 and 1983 massacres. From 1983 until 1993, Mountain Christians were not able to return to their villages or bury their dead in their ancestral lands. Like some of the other papers in this volume that deal with the dead as agents of various political agendas, Dima de Clerck’s paper examines how the “symbolic return” of the Christian victims of massacres and Christians’ “normal” dead since 1993 is part of a complex reconciliation process that allows both the dead and the living to reclaim their place in the villages from which they were displaced. Through transformed funeral rituals and commemorative practices, the social return of the dead to their final resting place in the village church also symbolizes the end of the living people’s exile, and functions as a signal to the Druze that the Christians have returned. In this case, “the war dead are treated by both parties as a ‘currency’ used for self-victimization and for urging the opposite party to ‘calm down’ and to keep a low-profile in negotiations. They are used as a protective blanket to assuage frustrations and to keep the involved parties from resorting to violence or revenge once more” (217).The common thread between the papers in this volume is the complex interplay of politics and religion as they impact the religious heritage of multiethnic regions affected by intercommunal conflict and violence. Whether intentional and systematic or accidental, acts of desecration, vandalism, destruction, or neglect of religious sites and objects are often results of such conflicts. When the Cemetery Becomes Political expands the discussion beyond these acts of perpetration by examining the reasons for them and emphasizing the agency of religious heritage as a political actor used as leverage by opposing sides. Given that the volume presents the result of three conferences held on the topic between 2017 and 2019, it is surprising that only a total of 10 papers are included in it. Unfortunately, the preface does not provide any information, neither as to how many papers in total were presented at these conferences, nor which papers were included/selected/submitted for publication and what papers were left out (if any). In fact, it erroneously mentions that 12 papers are included in the volume when in fact there are only 10 (see first page of Preface/Acknowledgments). In any case, only four geographical regions were (unevenly) included, Cyprus being the most represented with five papers, and Bosnia/Herzegovina and Greece the least, with only one paper each. Furthermore, even though the editors of the volume have attempted to order the individual papers in each section of the book to somehow flow into each other thematically, each paper stands alone, presenting mostly a one-sided argument, leaving the reader who tries to comprehend the full dimensions of each presented case study dissatisfied. One would expect a publication like this one that deals with such contentious issues to include multivocal case studies or even responses to the papers presented at the conferences. Nevertheless, the book is still an important contribution to the fields of heritage studies, archaeology, anthropology, and sociology, and for anyone who wishes to understand the broader sociopolitical and cultural implications of dealing with religious heritage in general.