ARMENIAN MONUMENTS THREATENED IN GEORGIA, RUSSIA

ArmenPress
July 18 2005

AKHALKALAKI, JULY 18, ARMENPRESS: Residents of an an-Armenian populated
Akhalkalaki in southern Georgia rampaged a local Georgian school and
attacked Georgian students from the local branch of Tbilisi State
University on Sunday after learning that students “had cleaned up a
territory around and inside a church in a remote Samsa village.”

Armenians say what Georgians call “cleaning up” is a systematic drive
to appropriate Armenian cultural monuments in the southern Georgia by
erasing Armenian-language inscriptions and other signs, testifying
to their being Armenian. A local source was quoted by Regnum news
agency as saying that Armenians were offended deeply by the news and
rose to defend the church from being seized by Georgians.

Local police has started an investigation under a penal code article
on ‘religious intolerance.” In a related development a monument in
a southern Russian town of Budenovsk erected in commemoration of its
Armenian founders was desecrated for the second time in less than six
weeks. Yerkramas weekly, published by the local Armenian community,
reported the monument had been first vandalized in 2005 February. The
newspaper says lampposts circling the monument, the lanterns and
a cross-stone were damaged this time and a dead cat was put under
its arch.