I’ve talked here before about Brent E. Huffman’s film, Saving Mes Aynak, the making of which Wildmind helped sponsor. Mes Aynak is a unique archaeological site: an abandoned Buddhist city in Afghanistan, where priceless relics have been unearthed. Unfortunately a Chinese mining consortium plans to destroy the entire site in order to mine for copper. This is equivalent to Greece bulldozing classical buildings like the Parthenon.
Saving Mes Aynak follows archaeologist Qadir Temori as he races against time to save this 5,000-year-old Buddhist archeological site from imminent demolition. So far only 10% of Mes Aynak has been excavated, though, and some believe that future discoveries there have the potential to redefine the history of Afghanistan and the history of Buddhism itself.
This brief trailer gives just a flavor of some of the precious finds that have been excavated from Mes Aynak.
According to the Saving Mes Aynak Indiegogo fundraising page:
The only way for Mes Aynak to be saved is if the Afghan government intervenes, halts mining, and officially petitions to UNESCO to make Mes Aynak a World Heritage Site. Only the Afghan government can approach UNESCO.
Through our film Saving Mes Aynak, our major goal is to raise mass awareness of the impending demolition, creating an international movement to put pressure on the mining company, the Afghanistan government, and UNESCO to make Mes Aynak a World Heritage Site.
This is the ONLY WAY to #SAVEMESAYNAK.