PanARMENIAN.Net - Azerbaijani soldiers have been filmed vandalizing the St. Astvatsatsin Church in the Nagorno-Karabakh village of Karin Tak, which came under Baku's control in the Second Karabakh War in fall 2020.
Fresh footage published online shows that the Lord's table at the altar of the church has been broken, the inside of the church is in a state of disarray, while Azerbaijani soldiers are moving between the sacristies and climbing onto the altar.
In addition, the Azerbaijanis are heard saying a Muslim prayer inside the Christian site of worship and desecrating the Armenian cultural heritage, Monuments Watch said.
In was reported days earlier that Azerbaijan’s government has announced that it intends to erase Armenian inscriptions on religious sites in the territory that came under Baku's control in the 2020 war.
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.