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| Amal Clooney advises Greece on return of Parthenon marbles to Athens | Amal Clooney advises Greece on return of Parthenon marbles to Athens |
| (about 20 hours later) | |
| Amal Clooney, the human rights lawyer, has said it is only prudent that Greece seeks legal advice in its attempt to reclaim the Parthenon marbles from the British Museum, but hopes an amicable solution can be found to the decades-long dispute. | Amal Clooney, the human rights lawyer, has said it is only prudent that Greece seeks legal advice in its attempt to reclaim the Parthenon marbles from the British Museum, but hopes an amicable solution can be found to the decades-long dispute. |
| Speaking exclusively to the Guardian, the Oxford-educated lawyer, who recently shot to fame when she married George Clooney, said repatriating the classical masterpieces to their original home would only be fair. | Speaking exclusively to the Guardian, the Oxford-educated lawyer, who recently shot to fame when she married George Clooney, said repatriating the classical masterpieces to their original home would only be fair. |
| “In my view returning the Parthenon Marbles to Greece is the just thing to do,” said Clooney on the first day of a three-day visit to Athens in which she held talks with the Greek culture minister to discuss the country’s legal options. “I hope that an amicable solution to this issue can be found, given the longstanding friendship between Greece and the UK,” she said, adding that she and her colleagues, Geoffrey Robertson and Norman Palmer, QCs and specialists in cultural restitution, had initially been approached by the Greek authorities three years ago. | |
| “But I believe it is prudent for the Greek government to seek legal advice – including in relation to ongoing efforts to engage Unesco – and of course it is for them to determine their next steps in light of this legal context.” | |
| Clooney, who was making her first professional foray since her wedding in Venice three weeks ago, will meet prime minister Antonis Samaras, a fervent advocate of the marbles’ return, on Wednesday. | |
| The Greek leader is thought to have instructed the high-powered team to come to Greece after all other channels – both political and diplomatic – were felt to have been exhausted. Since July 2013, Britain has failed to respond to an appeal by Samaras’ administration for the dispute to be mediated by Unesco, the United Nation’s cultural arm. | |
| For nearly 40 years Athens has argued that the sculptures – part of a giant frieze depicting the Panathenaic procession, which adorned the Parthenon until their removal by Lord Elgin, England’s ambassador to the Ottoman Empire – should be “reunited” with surviving pieces in Athens in the name of respect for a monument of universal importance. | For nearly 40 years Athens has argued that the sculptures – part of a giant frieze depicting the Panathenaic procession, which adorned the Parthenon until their removal by Lord Elgin, England’s ambassador to the Ottoman Empire – should be “reunited” with surviving pieces in Athens in the name of respect for a monument of universal importance. |
| In a foretaste of the arguments Greece could deploy if the property row were ever to reach the courts, Geoffrey Robertson insisted that the marbles posed a unique case and, as such, would not endanger the British Museum’s collections. | In a foretaste of the arguments Greece could deploy if the property row were ever to reach the courts, Geoffrey Robertson insisted that the marbles posed a unique case and, as such, would not endanger the British Museum’s collections. |
| “The Parthenon friezes are an amazing and unique snapshot of human civilisation 2,500 years ago. They show not war but happy, well-liquored discourse between the first truly civilised peoples. Half of this snapshot is in Athens beneath the blue sky above the Acropolis. The other half is in a sterilised gallery as if on a hospital bed in a museum,” he told the Guardian. | “The Parthenon friezes are an amazing and unique snapshot of human civilisation 2,500 years ago. They show not war but happy, well-liquored discourse between the first truly civilised peoples. Half of this snapshot is in Athens beneath the blue sky above the Acropolis. The other half is in a sterilised gallery as if on a hospital bed in a museum,” he told the Guardian. |
| Robertson, who enlisted Clooney to work on a team now handling the portfolio at the London-based legal firm Doughty Chambers, described the British Museum’s steadfast refusal to return the carvings as “arrogant cultural vandalism”. | Robertson, who enlisted Clooney to work on a team now handling the portfolio at the London-based legal firm Doughty Chambers, described the British Museum’s steadfast refusal to return the carvings as “arrogant cultural vandalism”. |
| Even worse, he said, the British institution had committed the cardinal sin of damaging the sculptures by employing controversial means to clean them in the nearly 200 years since it had acquired the stones. | Even worse, he said, the British institution had committed the cardinal sin of damaging the sculptures by employing controversial means to clean them in the nearly 200 years since it had acquired the stones. |
| “It is a great project, not for Greece but for the world, to reunite the marbles so we can see them clearly where Phidias first carved them, to juxtapose the beginning of human civilisation with the threat to it posed today by Isis,” added the barrister, referring to the barbaric tactics employed by Islamist terrorists to the east of Greece. | “It is a great project, not for Greece but for the world, to reunite the marbles so we can see them clearly where Phidias first carved them, to juxtapose the beginning of human civilisation with the threat to it posed today by Isis,” added the barrister, referring to the barbaric tactics employed by Islamist terrorists to the east of Greece. |
| “It is arrogant cultural vandalism for the British Museum to insist that this most important relic of our culture should be broken in two. International law has developed to the stage where a unique, and I stress unique, cultural artefact should be repaired.” | “It is arrogant cultural vandalism for the British Museum to insist that this most important relic of our culture should be broken in two. International law has developed to the stage where a unique, and I stress unique, cultural artefact should be repaired.” |
| Robertson, who with Palmer helped secure the return of Aborigine remains to Australia from London’s Natural History Museum, denied that the repatriation of the artworks would open the floodgates to similar claims. “This case will not set a precedent, the British Museum can keep its mummies but not marbles that, united, belong to the world.” | Robertson, who with Palmer helped secure the return of Aborigine remains to Australia from London’s Natural History Museum, denied that the repatriation of the artworks would open the floodgates to similar claims. “This case will not set a precedent, the British Museum can keep its mummies but not marbles that, united, belong to the world.” |
| • This article was amended on 15 October 2014 to remove references to Clooney’s age which were not relevant to the article. |
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