It is hypocrisy bordering on immorality when those who justify the destruction of Armenian churches and the desecration of khachkars dare to accuse the Armenian Church of “obstructing peace.”
The Pan-Armenian Council for the Preservation of the Armenian Church states that the latest statement by the Caucasus Muslims’ Board is nothing other than a disgraceful and cheap act of servility, hidden behind a religious veil, aimed at justifying the barbarities of Baku’s dictatorial regime.
The razing to the ground of the Cathedral of the Protection of the Holy Mother of God in Stepanakert, and the insolence of calling it an “illegal structure,” is the height of open cynicism. One who desecrates and levels a house of God, a religious sanctuary, does not establish any right; rather, he signs his name beneath his own savage, terrorist nature. This is an act of cultural genocide, deliberately aimed at completely erasing the Armenian spirit and roots from Artsakh.
It is hypocrisy bordering on immorality when those who justify the destruction of Armenian churches and the desecration of khachkars dare to accuse the Armenian Church of “obstructing peace.” Listen and remember this well: on the blood and fate of the forcibly displaced Armenians of Artsakh, on ethnic cleansing, destroyed monasteries, and sacrilege, you are not building peace, but a new calamity. What is imposed through the trampling of dignity and the erasure of memory is not peace; it is an act of surrender and humiliation, which we will never accept.
When any spiritual institution justifies vandalism, it ceases to be religious and turns into an accomplice of the criminal. But the international community is no less complicit. Your blind and deaf silence, your standardized and impotent expressions of “concern,” give Baku an unlimited license of impunity.
We demand in the strongest terms an end to international diplomatic hypocrisy. Human rights, religious, and cultural institutions, including UNESCO, must either step out of the status of cowardly observers and demand harsh sanctions against Azerbaijan, or they equally share the guilt for this cultural genocide. It is necessary to immediately dispatch an independent international mission to Artsakh to monitor these disgraceful destructions and to hold the authors and perpetrators of this barbarism accountable.
The barbarian’s bulldozer and commissioned administrative statements cannot erase Armenian history. The stones of Artsakh’s churches, even in their destroyed state, are stronger than your entire state propaganda machine.
Pan-Armenian Council for the Preservation of the Armenian Church
