Recently, Turkologist Varuzhan Geghamyan posted on his Facebook page that the enemy is now focusing on eradicating the Armenian heritage in Shushi after the city was occupied, and according to satellite images, Shushi’s Kanach Zham church has been destroyed.
Culture specialist and participant in the Artsakh war Gagik Ginosyan spoke about the topic during a press conference at the Henaran press club. According to his sources, the church was destroyed in the second half of November, and mainly the domes were destroyed, but that does not mean anything. He said that this is just another example of the destruction of Armenian cultural artifacts that is taking place as international structures remain silent, but the Armenian authorities are also silent. “Neither Armenia nor Artsakh have authorities, which is why no one is speaking out about this,” Ginosyan said.
“At the time when UNESCO had Armenia and Armenian cultural figures wrapped around its figure for four years because it did not accept Kochari as an intangible form of the Armenian cultural heritage, no one spoke out about what UNESCO was doing. Then, it turned out that a certain Bokova (UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova) was a close friend of Aliyev’s wife and a Bulgarian or someone of Turkish origin living in Bulgaria. Kochari was only accepted after that woman was caught and fired for accepting bribes, and Charles Aznavour was the first to be congratulated as the Armenian ambassador to UNESCO. When Charles Aznavour was still alive, no one from the Armenian government or the Ministry of Culture spoke out about the issue. The same happened when UNESCO rewrote Kochari and Tamzara by the Azerbaijani name of Yayli as a disappearing culture of the people of Nakhichevan. I appealed to the minister several times. At the time, it was still Hasmik Poghosyan, then Lilit Makunts, but no one spoke out about the problem as far as how it is possible to do something like that. I posted on social media and said during press conferences that the authorities of Armenia are obligated to speak out about this, and that the majority of people living in Nakhichevan at the beginning of the 20th century- about 90 percent- were Armenians. What disappearing culture can they be talking about? I said that an appeal needs to be filed to UNESCO, but Armenia was silent,” Gagik Ginosyan said.
He also spoke about the destruction of the khachkars in Jugha. “The same thing happened in 2005-2006 when the khachkars in Jugha were destroyed. Around 3,000 khachkars had been destroyed, and the only official statement from Armenia was from the late Samvel Karapetyan. He spoke out about this in front of the whole world. Then, his son filmed a movie about it, and that was where everything ended.
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In other words, Armenia never spoke out about anything from this perspective. The same happened with the Armenian church in Der Zor, Syria, and the targeted destruction of the Armenian church in Aleppo. And it is not important that this took place in Syria; those were Armenian churches that belonged to the Armenian Apostolic Church, but not even the church spoke out about it. The same is happening now. Armenia is deaf and mute.”
Gohar Hakobyan
