Oriana Fallaci on Buddhas of Bamiyan

“You know, when I despair, I don't always have before my eyes the apocalyptic scenes of September 11. ... Often with the two Towers that no longer exist overlap the two Buddhas which the Taliban destroyed in Afghanistan. The two images mix, unite, become the same thing, and I think: have people already forgotten it? Not me. In fact when I look at the two little Buddhas I keep in my living-room which an old monk persecuted by the Khmer Rouge gave me in Pnomh Penh, my heart is tightening. And instead of two small brass Buddhas I see the two huge Buddhas in the valley of Bamiyan.”

“My heart is also tightening for the way in which they have killed them [the Buddhas of Bamiyan]... They have not acted with the irrationality and bestiality of the Chinese Maoists who destroyed Lhasa in 1951, broke into monasteries and into the palace of the Dalai Lama and like drunken buffalo razed to the ground the monuments of a civilization... The destruction of Lhasa was not preceded by a trial... But in the case of the Buddhas of Bamiyan, there was a real process. There was a real sentence, then an execution was decided based on legal norms or presumed legal norms. It was therefore, a premeditated crime.”