ANCA WELCOMES END TO U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT’S THREE-MONTH SILENCE ON AZERBAIJAN’S DESTRUCTION OF HISTORIC DJULFA CEMETERY
Noyan Tapan
Armenians Today
Mar 09 2006
WASHINGTON, MARCH 9, NOYAN TAPAN – ARMENIANS TODAY. “We welcome the
end to the State Department’s long silence on Djulfa, but regret that
it took three months and sustained international protest before our
government summoned the will to utter its first public condemnation of
a clear cut and thoroughly documented case of cultural desecration,”
said ANCA Executive Director Aram Hamparian, commenting on the
statement made by U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matthew
Bryza at the press conference in Yerevan on March 7. Responding to
reporters’ questions by describing the destruction as a “tragedy,”
Matthew Bryza noted that, “it’s awful what happened in Djulfa. But
the United States cannot take steps to stop it as it is happening on
foreign soil. We continually raise this issue at meetings with Azeri
officials. We are hopeful that the guilty will justly be punished. We
are hopeful that in no other state of the region such things will
happen again, as there are great historic monuments in the Caucasus
and, frankly speaking, in all three states they are endangered.” In
December of 2005, approximately 200 Azerbaijani forces were videotaped
using sledgehammers to demolish the Armenian cemetery in Djulfa, a
sacred site of the Armenian Apostolic Church. The cemetery dates back
to the 7th Century and once was home to as many as 10,000 khatchkars
(stone-crosses).