Adding insult to injury?
The twittersphere was alive on Monday with breaking news that a statue had disappeared, been stolen, in downtown Bishkek, (one of the news reports that I particularly liked said that it had been “kidnapped”).
The statue in question was a fairly recent one, erected only a few years ago in October 2010, in memory of Gennady Pavlyuk. The statue was almost life sized and portrayed the journalist with his recorder in his left hand.
Located on one of the main streets in central Bishkek, (Abrachmanova, formerly Sovietskaya), almost opposite the Opera and Ballet Theater, by the side of a small hotel, in some open ground in front of a library with a café nearby and near to city landmarks the Museum of Fine Arts and the Hyatt. Interestingly it was a fairly low key statue, literally at street level rather than on a plinth.
For the record, Pavlyuk was journalist who the editor in chief of the Bishkek based newspaper Biyeliy Parahod, (White Ship), having also served as the editor for the Kyrgyz edition of the popular Komsomolskoye Pravada and also Argumenti i Fakti. He was an outspoken critic of the previous regime of President Kurmanbek Bakiev and in a high profile case was killed in Almaty, Kazakhstan, in December 2009 – “falling” from the sixth floor window of an apartment block. He died in hospital some six days later without having regained consciousness.
It is not known why he went to Almaty – there were some suggestions that he was investigating a stolen car racket, but other people claim that he was having meetings with supporters to discuss establishing an opposition news website.
The case immediately aroused suspicions – not just of foul play, but of possible nefarious involvement by the then Kyrgyz government. It was apparently quite clear that it was not an accident – his hands and legs bound by tape – but the Kazakh authorities have maintained throughout that it was a case of a robbery gone wrong. Some people have been arrested and convicted of murder but despite attempts to find any links between them and the Bakiev nothing has been found to suggest any connection between his death and the former Kyrgyz authorities.
Last year, a prize was inaugurated for journalists in his honour … covering eleven different categories in TV, Radio and Print media.
It seems that during Sunday night, (the early hours of Monday morning), thieves cut the bronze statue from its base and took it away. They seem to have been pretty quiet about it with practically no-one noticing anything, although a security guard in one of the nearby established did hear a sound , a “dull roar” sometime around 02:30, but didn’t think anything of it at the time.
It was much later when the police were alerted – apparently they arrived on the scene well after sun up, at 6:50. They have obviously mounted an investigation and are checking all the possible outlets for scrap metal – the vale of the statue is said to be worth something in the region of twenty thousand dollars.
I’ve walked past the statue several times over the last few years and when I first saw it I thought it was a mountaineer or “pioneer” with a backpack – and it was only only after making a note of the name and looking it up when I got back to the office that the “penny dropped” and I realized who, in fact, it was. Since then, I have often “kicked myself” for not having my camera with me at the time … and made a “mental note” to try and remember to bring it next time I would be in the area so that I could photograph it. Now, I suppose, it is too late … although that’s not necessary true.
There was, for example, a bust of the Kyrgyz poet Djormat Bokonbaev in the central reservation of Prospect Erkindik, (between Bokonbaeva and Moskovskaya streets), that was stolen in 2003. The thieves had taken it for it’s scrap metal value … but they were caught within days of the event, and the bust was recovered and, although it took some time for the bust to undergo reconstruction, is now back on its plinth.
There have been other thefts of monuments for the value of the scrap metal they contained. The Open Air Sculpture Museum in Oak Park displays many stone monuments erected as part of symposiums between 1984 and 1996, butat one time apparently had some made from metal including a bust of the first astronaut/cosmonaut, Yuri Gargarin, which have also disappeared – presumably sold as scrap metal as part of the thriving trade with to China.
Before anyone gets the impression that I am criticizing Kyrgzystan for this apparently “philistine” conduct, I ought to point out that such activity is not unknown in the West.
Many galleries suffer from theft, and a painting that was recently sold for a record fee at auction, (Munch’s, The Scream) and the Mona Lisa have both been stolen at one time or another. Last year a heavy bronze sculpture by Babara Hepworth was stolen from a park in London. In 2010 a Henry Moore sculpture that had been stolen from a New York art gallery in 2001 was recovered in Toronto. In 2005 another Henry Moore piece was stolen from the 72-acre estate of the Henry Moore Foundation in Much Hadham, Hertfordshire. Thieve rolled up and put the three meter long, two tonne work of art onto a truck and drove off with it. It was originally thought that the piece had been “stolen to order”, but then in 2009, it emerged that it had been cut up for scrap metal. A piece of Art that was originally valued at three million pounds was apparently sold for just one thousand five hundred.
If the Henry Moore case is anything to go by … I doubt that the thieves will get anything close to the USD20,000 that Pavlyuk’s statue is valued at … that is, assuming that the motive was indeed to sell it as scrap metal. 9Although this probably was indeed the motive, one can’t help wondering if there was more to this theft than appears on first glance because of the subject of the statue.) not only does the theft seem a waste of time and effort, (to have risked their freedom on such a venture for what is likely to be a “small reward”), an act of pure vandalism, but it is also one that adds insult to injury to the memory of a man who died in such tragic circumstances.
Bishkek