Killing Memory: Ethnic Cleansing, Genocide and the Targeting of Cultural Heritage in the Balkan Wars of the 1990s

Please join us for a talk with András Riedlmayer, Director of the Documentation Center of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard University.

András Riedlmayer directs the Documentation Center of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard University. A specialist in the history, art and cultures of SE Europe, he has spent much of the past 25 years documenting the destruction of cultural heritage in the Balkan wars of the 1990s. He has testified about his findings before the UN war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the trials of Slobodan Milošević and other indictees. In March 2006, he was an expert witness in the genocide case brought by Bosnia against Serbia before the International Court of Justice. He has been involved initiatives to help recover and rebuild library collections, historical archives and built heritage lost or damaged in the Balkan wars of the 1990s. His talk will explore the nexus between the protection of cultural heritage and human rights in time of armed conflict and the legal and practical challenges of bringing to justice those responsible for crimes against culture.

From Columbia’s Harriman Institute.