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Azerbaijan Must Be Held Accountable For Cultural and Religious Destruction
TORONTO - On December 15, 2005, the government of Azerbaijan orchestrated the final demolition of the historic Armenian cemetery in Djulfa, an ancient Armenian city now located in Azerbaijan. Today marks the fifth anniversary of the final blow to the 10,000 intricately hand carved khachkars (stone crosses) which were erected between the 6th through the 17th centuries. By 1998, following systemic destruction of the khachkars by Azerbaijani authorities over decades, only 2,000 remained.
By December 15, 2005, the final destruction was complete. Approximately 200 Azerbaijani soldiers amassed at the Nakhichevan-Iran border to desecrate the remaining grave markers at the Djulfa Armenian cemetery. The cemetery has since been replaced with an Azerbaijani military training base. Other Armenian sacred and historic sites in Azerbaijan have faced the same fate such as the Pombloz or Hovivi (Shepherd's) Church built in the 16th century which was destroyed along with its cemetery in 2002.
Khachkars are cross-stones approximately one metre wide and up to two and a half metres high, richly decorated with Christian symbols, flowers and arabesque climbing plants as well as depicting subjects from daily life. In November 2010, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) declared the Armenian Khachkar an intangible cultural heritage in need of urgent safeguarding. http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/index.php?lg=en&pg=00011&RL=00434.
Although this protects khachkars that remain elsewhere in the world, the oldest have already become victim to systematic campaigns of destruction by the government of Azerbaijan.
On December 5, 2010, the American Association for the Advancement of Science published a case study titled "High-Resolution Satellite Imagery and the Destruction of Cultural Artifacts in Nakhchivan, Azerbaijan". This recent report further documents the destruction through clear satellite imagery. http://shr.aaas.org/geotech/azerbaijan/Azerbaijan_Report.pdf
Martha Hall Findlay, MP for Willowdale, and a friend of the Canadian Armenian community, made a statement in the House of Commons earlier today marking the fifth anniversary of the destruction of the khachkars by Azerbaijan describing it as "a significant loss of history and culture". In her remarks, she also commended the work of the Armenian-Canadian community. Her statement can be viewed at www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWWq5sy1EIU.
Despite the photographic and videotaped evidence, the government of Azerbaijan has since denied their atrocities. The Armenian National Committee of Toronto calls on all Canadians to demand that UNESCO hold Azerbaijan officially accountable for this cultural destruction. Vahan Ajamian, Chair of the Armenian National Committee of Toronto said, "Recent decades have unfortunately been marked by the government of Azerbaijan's aggression toward Armenians which continues to unfold today. This hostility has become the source of massacres, mass deportations, and cultural and religious destruction in the country. The international community must condemn the Azerbaijani government's acts of aggression against Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh which threaten regional peace and stability. Inaction against such harmful activities will only encourage similar destruction around the world."
Azerbaijan's aggressive history, combined with regular threats by President Ilham Aliyev to restart the war in Nagorno-Karabakh, merely cement our view that Nagorno-Karabakh's independence must be universally recognized and that a return to Azerbaijani rule jeopardizes the lives of the Armenians living there and is therefore unacceptable. Furthermore, governments around the world must condemn Azerbaijan for the continued display of religious intolerance, and aggression in the Caucasus region.
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