Commentator:

The ruins of Angkor, monuments to one of humankind's greatest architectural achievements. For half a millennium, this sacred place was the centre of a vast Khmer Empire. Invaders forced out the God Kings who built it, and Angkor was surrendered to the jungle for another 500 years. But here the Empires descendants live on to watch another invasion begin.

Producer:

Action. Cut. Cut. Stop. Stop. Cut.

Commentator:

In ancient Angkor, Hollywood has discovered a hot new location [crosstalk] for a blockbuster movie based on Tomb Raider. A phenomenally successful computer game.

Producer:

[foreign language] Action.

Commentator:

Angelina Jolie stars as Lara Croft, the game's pistol packing, antiquities hunting, adventurer.

Angelina Jolie:

Yeah it is from a computer game, and that is the generation today. And the generation today should also be a group of people who are ... now have the access to places like this and history like this. And so, when it all comes together it's ... it is very much the world we're living in and it feels like just the perfect time for this.

Commentator:

[crosstalk] Just a few years ago, this was a war torn destination braved by only the hardiest adventure travellers. Now it's quickly becoming a must stop on the mainstream tourist trail. The number of visitors to Angkor has more than doubled in the last 12 months. In the next few years more foreigners will explore these temples than ever before in their 1000 year history.

In the early Seventies, Angkor Wat the jewel in Angkor's crown, fell to Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge.

Speaker 4:

[Foreign Language]

Commentator:

The last Khmer Rouge fighters were dislodged from Cambodia's temples only 2 years ago.

Speaker 5:

The Khmer Rouge decimated the Cambodia's cultural legacy and cultural heritage and peoples belief in their own culture. So it kind of devalued the statuary, devalued the temples, and to the point that people didn't really care and people were motivated by the need to make money, fast. And the easiest way to do that was to sell basically art to order. So if an art dealer came into Bangkok, contacted with someone in Khmer Rouge or the military, then placed an order for a specific piece, got it photographed, got it stolen.

Commentator:

Statues are still being stolen from Angkor. The problem is so bad, that Cambodia's government has now named antiquities looting as one of the greatest threats to its national security. Ashley Thompson is an American [crosstalk] advisor to APSARA authority, which conserve and protects the Angkor area.

Ashley Thompson:

There are just a few remaining stone statues here, and one was stolen late one night or early one morning. A few months ago.

Commentator:

In a very recent raid, right in the middle of Angkor's town of Siem Reap, a 1000 year old lion statue was stolen.

Ashley Thompson:

And here you can see the trace of the ... the remains of the stone ... the base. It was here that the statue was stolen and this piece has disappeared probably forever.

Commentator:

If Laura Croft is a tomb raider, then Ashley Thompson is a tomb saver.

Ashley Thompson:

On a daily basis I would say, if not at least a weekly basis, statues are stolen from Buddhist pagodas. It's still a major problem and then once you get out of Angkor park into more isolated area's, the temples are at risk, the temples are incredibly at risk. [foreign language]

Commentator:

Two hours away from Angkor, a private park is managed to profit by local business man, and his own private army of ex-Khmer Rouge soldiers. Out here the temples are accessible only by motor bike or on foot. Remote and unguarded, looters are tearing them apart.

Ashley Thompson:

Well, obviously the front has been ... the front as been really damaged. The sculptures sandstone lintel here has been taken down, so it's down here in front. Given the digging all around the temple, I imagine, yeah in here, see how the pedestal there has been removed, it would have been right in the middle of the sanctuary, it's been removed and there's a very very deep hole there. So what you see here is the centre of the sanctuary has been completely dug out. The looters will remove the pedestal and then they will dig deep deep deep down under where the statue would have been -

Speaker 7:

What are they looking for?

Ashley Thompson:

Looking for some sort of treasure, some sort of sacred foundation, maybe a few diamonds, some crystal's something like that.

Commentator:

Back in town, two weeks after Ashley told us it was probably missing forever, the looted lion statue is found buried in a looter's backyard.[foreign language] The thieves were arrested, paraded before the local media and sent to jail. At Siem Reap prison, we caught up with [inaudible] who say they were offered Thai baht worth a few hundred dollars to steal the lion statue

Speaker 8:

[foreign language]

Speaker 9:

[foreign language]

Commentator:

Like all the men in prison here, these lion looters are well down the food chain of Angkor's antiquities racket.

Speaker 10:

Across the boarder here in Thailand, you can get a lot closer to the real predators at the top of the looting game. This is Bangkok's Chao Phraya river, and that exclusive shopping complex is known as River City. There if you believe the claims of its traders you can buy a genuine 800 year old Cambodian statues for tens of thousands of dollars.

Commentator:

We visited River City with a concealed camera. In one store seventy thousand dollars will buy you a well preserved Twelfth century Angkor statue.

Speaker 15:

But this one they bring from [inaudible]

Speaker 10:

Mm-hmm (affirmative), we don't know -

Speaker 15:

They are weighed to bring to here.

Commentator:

At another shop this 800 year old sandstone carving, sells for more than three thousand dollars.

Speaker 11:

[inaudible] they're broken from the big panels.

Speaker 10:

They're broken from the big panels.

Speaker 11:

Mm-hmm (affirmative)

Speaker 10:

From actually Angkor Wat or other temples?

Speaker 11:

You know the temple in Angkor Wat, so I don't know which temple. But this stein, Angkor Wat stein, and the twelfth century this already a [inaudible] and I give you a [inaudible] discount.

Speaker 10:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). But how do you get them? How do you come to get them?

Speaker 11:

We get them from the border.

Speaker 10:

From the border.

Speaker 11:

Yes. Before Angkor there, they have problems. [inaudible]

Commentator:

Some of Cambodia's truly priceless treasures have been saved from the looting racket. They are locked away here at the Conservation de Angkor, right next to the Angkor park. Locked away but not always safe. When the United Nations arrived in Cambodia in the early 90s, the countries antiquities were suddenly exposed to a ruthless international market. Armed bandits attacked the conservations and drove away with truckloads of statues.

Speaker 12:

[crosstalk] and so the robbers come in and they took machine guns and they used a grenade -

Speaker 10:

A grenade

Speaker 12:

Yes, a grenade explode here, in front of the [inaudible]. So you can see the holes from the grenade when explode here. 40 rebels come in with machine guns and rocket launcher.

Speaker 10:

With rocket launchers?

Speaker 12:

Yeah, with rocket launcher [inaudible].

Commentator:

To combat that sort of fire power, the looters arsenal has been matched by Angkor's new heritage police. [crosstalk] Armed to the teeth, this small force is now credited with stamping out much of the looting, at least within the confines of the Angkor park.

Speaker 13:

[foreign language]

Commentator:

In a country where police corruption is rife, this dedicated force is now a celebrated exception.

Speaker 13:

[foreign language]

Commentator:

Angkor's Prah Khan temple complex, has been viciously vandalised. John Sandy has been working for more than a decade to preserve what's left.

John Sandy:

Through here you have examples of looting, rather disastrous in fact, they literally knock the heads off. Its very typical of the local type, the local style of looting

Speaker 10:

And what would a head like that be worth say in the European market or the American market if someone was actually looking to buy?

John Sandy:

I should think, you'd probably 10 thousand, something like that.

Commentator:

But now John Sandy believes the greatest threat to Angkor's future is no longer looters, but tourist.

John Sandy:

I have spent the last 30 years in Asia, particularly in Nepal. And I've seen the destruction of a remarkable culture by so called Westernisation. Tourist have a very adverse effect on places, unless they're controlled. I hope that the alarm bells are ringing sufficiently loud amongst those that have control over Angkor. That they will actually put a brake on it, and at least control the number of tourist visiting say a site like Angkor Wat.

Commentator:

In a country where PC new and infrastructure is old, the hunger for quick tourist dollars is in danger of exceeding Angkor's capacity to cope. [crosstalk] But the show will go on and Hollywood's new mass market movie will make sure of that.

Speaker 5:

There going to see these temples in the ... as backdrops and think "My God, I must got there." So there's going to be a whole new audience that suddenly think Cambodia's the place to go. It's changing, Cambodia isn't about civil war, isn't about famine, isn't about genocide, those are in the past. Cambodia's future should be very different.

Commentator:

With a generation of knowledge wiped out by Pol Pat's genocide, Angkor's future is now in the hands of a new generation of Cambodians. Remarkably, so much of what their ancestors built still stands in a country where so many have fallen.