Search results for "crime of persecution"

Attacking cultural property to destroy a community: heritage destruction as a crime against humanity and genocide

2020

Cultural heritage, if considered in a multilevel dimension, represents the essence of a population. Attacks against tangible cultural heritage can amount to persecution or ethnic cleansing if committed with a discriminatory intent. For their nature, such attacks are often accompanied by destruction of intangible cultural heritage targeting the language, the traditions and the uses of a people. They cause, alongside tremendous losses of something unique and irreplaceable, psychological damages to the communities linked to them. An episode of cultural cleansing like the removal of communities by eradicating their cultural presence on a land encompasses also deliberate attacks against cultural…