Ms. Audrey Azoulay,
Director-General of UNESCO
7, place de Fontenoy, 75352 Paris 07 SP, France
Madam Director-General,
Your Excellency,
During the 44-day war, along with human casualties, Armenia also had huge cultural losses. There is an enormous cultural heritage left behind in the territories occupied by Azerbaijan, for which Azerbaijan has adopted a policy of open destruction. In addition to deliberate acts of cultural vandalism, the Azerbaijani government is engaged in scientific forgery. On February 3, 2022, Azerbaijani and international media sources reported that by a decree of minister of Culture of the Republic of Azerbaijan Anar Kerimov a working group has been established which will be responsible for removing “the fictitious traces written by Armenians on Albanian places of worship” in the currently occupied territories of the Artsakh Republic.
The Azerbaijani state policy has one ultimate purpose: to distort and annihilate the Armenian historical-cultural heritage present in the occupied territories of the Artsakh Republic.
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It is worth reaffirming that the Azerbaijani authorities have a long history of destroying sites of great importance to the Armenian cultural heritage. In particular, in 2002 and 2005 (peace time) the Azerbaijani authorities demolished the historical Armenian cemetery in Djoulfa, province of Nakhichevan, which was the biggest and most precious repository of medieval headstones marked with crosses (khachkars ). Later the khachkars were used as construction materials.
The decision on application of provisional measures issued by the UN International Court of Justice on December 7, 2021, clearly obliges Azerbaijan to “Take all necessary measures to prevent and punish acts of vandalism and desecration, affecting Armenian cultural heritage, including but not limited to churches and other places of worship, monuments, landmarks, cemeteries, and artifacts.” Furthermore, the UN ICJ expresses concern about a developing narrative in Azerbaijan promoting a “Caucasian Albanian” heritage to replace what is seen as “Armenian” cultural heritage.
Cases of vandalism and destruction of the Armenian historical, cultural and religious heritage in Nagorno-Karabakh by the Azerbaijani authorities, as well as the deliberate and illegal appropriation of the historical memory at the state level, are of a continuous nature. Thus, Azerbaijan grossly violates the requirements of the above-mentioned decision issued by the UN International Court of Justice.
The Azerbaijani government is persistent in its pursuit of the policy of ethnic cleansing and destruction of cultural values, which poses serious dangers to the population of Armenia and Artsakh.
In view of the current situation, we expect the immediate intervention and unimpeded involvement of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) for the preservation and prevention of the cases of vandalism against the Armenian monuments of Artsakh, which are part of our universal cultural heritage.
We also emphasize the importance of UNESCO’s initiative, taken in conformity with Article 23 of the 1954 Hague Convention, to carry out as soon as possible an independent technical mission to those territories of the Artsakh Republic which have fallen under the control of Azerbaijan as a result of the war and the implementation of a fact-finding mission to evaluate the current condition of the historical-cultural heritage.
MPs of National Assembly of Armenia,
Members of the Standing Committee on Science, Education, Culture, Diaspora, Youth and Sport,
Lilit Galstian,
Elinar Vardanyan
