PanARMENIAN.Net - Lawmaker from Armenia's ruling Civil Contract party Sona Ghazaryan has slammed the European Union's €2b financial assistance package for Azerbaijan.

Ghazaryan 's comments came just days after Azerbaijan announced plans to erase Armenian traces from medieval churches in Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh).

"I'd like to tell the international community that this policy pursued by Azerbaijan is a challenge to the decision of the UN International Court of Justice on the application of urgent measures, adopted on December 7, 2021," Ghazaryan said.

"I would especially like to remind our partners in the European Union that they are in fact sending $2.1 billion to a country that stands out not only for its authoritarian regime, but also for its policy of vandalism against its neighbors and the destruction of our historical and cultural monuments."

Concerns about the preservation of cultural sites in Nagorno-Karabakh are made all the more urgent by the Azerbaijani government’s history of systemically destroying indigenous Armenian heritage—acts of both warfare and historical revisionism. The Azerbaijani government has secretly destroyed a striking number of cultural and religious artifacts in the late 20th century. Within Nakhichevan alone, a historically Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan, Azerbaijani forces destroyed at least 89 medieval churches, 5,840 khachkars (Armenian cross stones) and 22,000 historical tombstones between 1997 and 2006.