The Ghazanchetsots Cathedral in Shushi is being dismantled by Azerbaijanis
Azerbaijan’s government has set up a special commission with this specific task of destroying Armenian cultural heritage sites in Artsakh and presenting them as having an Albanian origin.
Azerbaijan’s Culture Minister Anar Karimov told local media that this commission comprises specialists who know the history, culture, and heritage of Albania.
“Armenians have left traces on our monuments. Now we are gathering evidence in this regard,” Karimov said, adding that the policy of Azerbaijan’s authorities is to identify Armenian churches as Albanian.
“Work is being done in this regard with international experts in the field of Albanian Studies,” Karimov said adding that plans are underway to invite those “experts” to Azerbaijan.
“The next phase will be to go—with local and international experts—to the areas where the Armenianized Albanian monuments are locate. All the facts will be documented and presented to the international community,” Karimov said.
Since the end of military actions in 2020, Azerbaijani authorities have categorically refused to allow UNESCO representatives to enter Armenian territories under their control, presumably to bide time to alter and falsify traces of Armenian heritage.
The issue of the destruction of Armenian cultural heritage in Artsakh was taken up on Friday by Jean-Christophe Buisson, the deputy editor of the French Le Figaro newspaper, who took to Twitter to call Azerbaijan’s effort “cultural genocide.”
His social media post was prompted by an announcement by Oliver Varhelyi, the European Commissioner for Neighborhood and Enlargement, who held meetings in Baku and praised EU’s energy partnership with Azerbaijan.
“While Azerbaijan continues its cultural genocide of the Armenian heritage in Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) without anyone reacting (especially not the French government or UNESCO), the EU welcomes its energy partnerships with Baku,” Buisson wrote on Twitter on Friday.