AZERBAIJAN FEELS RIGHT DEMOLISHING CHRISTIAN CEMETERIES

PanARMENIAN.Net
12.09.2007 15:39 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Under the pretext of building a highway Baku
demolishes a Christian cemetery (the Nariman cemetery), where
Armenians, Jews and Russians were buried.

Chief engineer of Civil Service Trust Firuz Askerov said "the hearsay
that bulldozers have razed to the ground the graves at the Nariman
cemetery is false."

"They work to lay a way through the site of displaced graves," he said.

According to him, "134 graves have been replaced from the Nariman
cemetery to the Govsany cemetery." Askerov said "besides Azeri graves
there were also graves of Russians, Georgians, Tatarts, Molokans, etc."

(However, he failed to mention about Armenians). He emphasized
that "only those graves which lie on the territory covered by the
contraction plan will be replaced," APA reports.

Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper reports that although local authorities
assure of reinterment, photos in Internet show a complete dump. The
photographers say the bulldozers just raze the graves to the ground
depriving the relatives to rebury the remains.

The city administration says exhumation and reinterment is performed
in accord with ethnic and religious traditions in the presence of
relatives of the deceased. Meanwhile, the Jewish News Agency reports
that "observance of Jewish traditions is restricted to the fact that
grave-diggers throw the ashes into sacks and then give them to the
relatives."