Friday, October 28, 2005

New law on the way

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2005/766/he1.htm
Ashraf Ashmawi, legal consultant in the SCA, told Al-Ahram Weekly that changes in the 1983 law focussed on five articles. The first was properly and legally to identify three main terms -- the SCA's permanent committee, the inviolable area around every monument, and the land found next door to the archaeological site -- in an attempt to provide all necessary security measures and a healthy environmental atmosphere The second article to be repealed is the section of the law allowing possession of antiquities. A year after the approval of the law all owners of Egyptian antiquities must hand over all objects to the SCA, which in its turn will install them in their archaeological storehouses. Ashmawi continued that Article 7 of the old law stipulating that the police were the only department authorised to remove any encroachments on archaeological sites or monuments had been changed. Such responsibility is to be given to the SCA's secretary-general, or to someone he entrusts, while the police agencies will only be a safeguarding agency while executing the secretary-general's decision. Article 30 has been added to the law stipulating that the SCA is the only authority competent to carry out restoration and preservation work for all Egyptian monuments, archaeological sites and historical edifices. The minister of culture will have the authority to assign any scientific authority or mission to execute any such work, but under complete supervision of the SCA's secretary-general. As for penalties, according to Ashmawi all these have been doubled or tripled.


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