1915
Complete The Ottoman Empire History,
RECOGNIZE The ARMENIAN GENOCIDE of 1915

G E N O C I D E
OF ARMENIANS 
AND  ARMENIAN CULTURE

About Cultural Genocide. What is it?

Cultural genocide is a term used to describe the deliberate destruction of the cultural heritage of a people or nation for political, military, religious, ideological, ethnical, or racial reasons.

Relevance to International Law

As early as 1933, Raphael Lemkin proposed a cultural component to genocide, which he called "vandalism".[1] However, the drafters of the 1948 Genocide Convention dropped that concept from their consideration.[2] The legal definition of genocide was confined to acts of physical or biological destruction with intent to destroy a racial, religious, ethnic or national group as such.[3]

Article 7 of the United Nations Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (26 August 1994)[4] uses the phrase "cultural genocide" but does not define what it means. The complete article reads as follows:

Indigenous peoples have the collective and individual right not to be subjected to ethnocide and cultural genocide, including prevention of and redress for:

(a) Any action which has the aim or effect of depriving them of their integrity as distinct peoples, or of their cultural values or ethnic identities;
(b) Any action which has the aim or effect of dispossessing them of their lands, territories or resources;
(c) Any form of population transfer which has the aim or effect of violating or undermining any of their rights;
(d) Any form of assimilation or integration by other cultures or ways of life imposed on them by legislative, administrative or other measures;
(e) Any form of propaganda directed against them.

It should be noted that this declaration is only a draft. Were it to pass, it would be a "soft law" instrument and would not present binding legal obligations on UN parties.

Despite its lack of legal currency, the term has acquired rhetorical value as a phrase that is used to protest against the destruction of cultural heritage. It is also often misused as a catchphrase to condemn any destruction the user of the phrase disapproves of, without regard for the criterion of intent to destroy an affected group as such.

Examples of the Term's Usage

Cultural advocates have leveled charges of "cultural genocide" in connection with various events:

* As part of a wider effort to destroy the Polish culture, the Germans during the Second World War closed or destroyed universities, high schools, museums, libraries, and scientific laboratories, and demolished hundreds of monuments to national heroes as a form of cultural genocide. To prevent the birth of a new generation of educated Poles, German officials decreed that the schooling of Polish children should end with elementary education. In a May 1940 memorandum, Heinrich Himmler wrote: "The sole goal of this schooling is to teach them simple arithmetic, nothing above the number 500; writing one's name; and the doctrine that it is divine law to obey the Germans. I do not think that reading is desirable." These efforts well along with general massacres of Polish intelligentsia, such as at Piaśnica Wielka where 12,000 intelligentsia were killed.

* In 2007, a Canadian Member of Parliament criticized the Ministry of Indian Affairs' destruction of documents regarding the treatment of First Nations members as "cultural genocide."[5]

* The destruction by Azerbaijan of thousands of medieval Armenian gravestones at a cemetery-site in Julfa, and Azerbaijan's subsequent denial that the site had ever existed, has been widely written about as being an example of cultural genocide.[6][7]

* When Turkey's Minister of Cultural Affairs opened the Aghtamar church in eastern Anatolia as a museum, critics objected to the use of its Turkified name, seeing in it a denial of the region's Armenian heritage and as a sort of "cultural genocide".[8]

"Azerbaijan: Vandalism as usual" "Азербайджан: вандализм как всегда"

The Armenian Genocide Museum Institute has published the illustrated book “Azerbaijan: Vandalism as usual” by Hayk Demoyan, which describes the barbaric demolition of the Armenian cemetery in Old Jugha in December 2005 implemented by the Azerbaijan army, Genocide Institute-Museum web site reports.

Hayk Demoyan
Director of the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute in Yerevan

In December 2005 the soldiers and officers of the Azerbaijan army entirely demolished thousands of unique cross-tones and tombstones in the Armenian cemetary of Old Jugha completing the state policy of destroying the Armenian Christian heritage in Nakhichevan and Azerbaijan territories within the last two decades.

During these vandalistic activities the Armenian medieval cross-tones and tombstones of Old Jugha were turned into mass and thrown into Arax River. At present the shooting-range has been constructed on the territory of the cemetary.

Regardless of the existing numerous photographic and video undeniable evidence and proof, up to date some international organizations, including UNESCO, have not appropriately evaluated the vandalistic activities which were planned and realized on behalf of the Republic of Azerbaijan.

Source:

Азербайджан стал проблемой для всего мира

Если такое государство как Азербайджан отрицает то, что доказано многочисленными свидетельствами, фотографиями и видеозaписями, то это не только проблема Армении и Азербайджана, а также проблема всего мира.

Газета пишет, что такое мнение выразил директор Музея-института Геноцида армян Айк Демоян, одновременно сообщив, что именно это послужило основанием для публикации его иллюстрированной книги «Азербайджан: вандализм как всегда» на английском языке. В книге описывается варварское уничтожение армянского кладбища Старой Джуги руками азербайджанской армии в декабре 2005 года.

«От Азербайджана можно ожидать все: такая страна может даже спровоцировать мировую войну. В первый раз я коснулся этой проблемы в 2005 году, через 20 дней после этого случая, однако сегодня прошло 5 лет, и Азербайджан еще не получил соответствующего ответа», - сказал Демоян, подчеркнув, что данный шаг стал большим ударом для пропаганды Азербайджана.  

Несмотря на наличие фотографий, многочисленные записи неоспоримых свидетельств и доказательств, по сей день ни одна международная организация, в том числе и ЮНЕСКО, не дали соответствующих оценок действиям Азербайджана, организованных и осуществленных на государственном уровне.

Source:

Acts of state-driven terrorism committed against Old Jugha remain unpunished

Today, December 15, 2010, marks the fifth anniversary of the destruction of the historic cross-stones located at the medieval Armenian cemetery of Old Jugha, which stands as an element of world cultural heritage. On 15 December 2005, the Azerbaijani government organized an operation carried out by their military which, conducted in broad daylight, finally completed the decades-long destruction of around 5,000 unique and irreplaceable cross-stones located at the cemetery of Old Jugha in Nakhichevan, which is a historic Armenian heartland.

This Taliban-style act was not an accidental crime of barbarity but, rather, a state-sponsored act of cultural terrorism, outright genocide and conscious vandalism. The final act of this inhuman campaign against the legacy of ancient Armenian civilization was directed by the clear objective of destroying all traces of Nakhichevan’s Armenian belonging.

On the 60th anniversary of the foundation of Azerbaijan’s Academy of Sciences on 14 December 2005, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev issued a call for his country’s scholars and academic institutions to “prove” to the international community the “lack” of the Artsakh (Karabagh) Armenians’ historical rights to the territory of Mountainous Karabagh and to substantiate his thesis that “being guests and appearing in Karabagh only in the 1870s, the Armenians have no historical rights over the territory of Mountainous Karabagh.”

If, in the case of Artsakh, these “scholars,” who have become complicit in the large-scale propaganda projects generously subsidized by the Azerbaijani president, were compelled to accomplish their “task” by merely falsifying history in foreign languages—since the Artsakh Armenians had “cut the leg” of the genocidal Azerbaijani state—in the case of the Armenian cultural heritage preserved in Nakhichevan this legacy was a slap in the face to Aliyev’s false historiography and was making the millions of potential petrodollars null and void. Thus, the army of the aggressor state was mobilized to execute that despicable objective, resulting in the destruction of the centuries-old cross-stones, “killed” one by one, and a military facility was constructed in its place, on the very hallowed ground where the cemetery had once stood for centuries.

By this action, the Azerbaijani leadership has reconfirmed that the Azerbaijani state only continues to be a threat, not solely to the Armenians, but also a threat to world civilization, and that not only the Armenians, but their cemeteries and their history have become persona non grata for Azerbaijan.

Since 2007, and on numerous occasions since then, the Heritage party and its leader Raffi K. Hovannisian, along with Heritage party Members of Parliament Zaruhi Postanjyan, Larisa Alaverdyan and Stiopa Safaryan have consistently spoken out against this crime committed in Old Jugha before the parliamentary assemblies of the PACE, OSCE and NATO, and before other international platforms, and also to the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights, insisting that a corresponding international fact-finding group must be sent to that region.

UNESCO Must Hold Azerbaijan Accountable for Destruction

NoThingfjord, a Turkish blog, writes:

…This [is] not only a crime against Armenian culture, but against our collective cultural heritage as humankind. Don’t let it go unnoticed.

Satellite data analyzed by the American Association for the Advancement of Science confirm the complete destruction of the medieval Djulfa cemetery in Azerbaijan.  Tell UNESCO to stop adding Azerbaijani monuments to the World Heritage List until Baku acknowledges and punishes the vandalism at Djulfa. 

Sign petition NOW

World’s largest body of scientists confirms destruction of Armenian khachkars in Nakhijevan

The world’s largest body of scientists, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, just released satellite image comparison and analysis confirming the complete destruction of the ancient Djulfa cemetery, located in an historic Armenian exclave currently occupied by Azerbaijan, Asbarez reported.

”A high-resolution satellite image of a medieval Armenian cemetery in Azerbaijan taken in September 2003 shows hundreds of khachkars, intricate 15th and 16th century burial monuments. In a satellite image from May 2009, however, the khachkars are missing, suggesting that they were either destroyed or removed. A comparison of the images by analysts from the AAAS Geospatial Technologies and Human Rights Project found evidence of significant destruction and changes in the grade of the cemetery’s terrain. The image from September 2003 shows rocky and uneven terrain, as well as shadows cast by the khachkars, while the May 2009 image shows a much flatter landscape and the khachkars’ absence,” the AAAS conclusion reads.

Five years ago this month, more than 100 uniformed Azerbaijanis were caught on tape destroying the burial monuments of the medieval Djulfa cemetery, founded in the Armenian province of Nakhichevan during the 9th century and thriving as late as the early 1600s. The soldiers were smashing Armenian monuments with sledgehammers, using a crane to remove some of the largest monuments from the ground, breaking the stones into small pieces, and dumping them into the River Araxes by a large truck.

Overall, an estimated 3,000 khachkars, or intricately carved burial monuments, the craftsmanship of which is a UNESCO Intangible Heritage Tradition, were erased from the face of the earth.

Azerbaijan’s President called the destruction report an “absolute lie,” and has maintained that official denial ever since.

Source:

Cultural Vandalism or Raping History?

Where is the civilized Europe? 


Where is UNESCO? 


Why does no one intervene?

This movie clip, dated December 14-16, 2005, shows how Azerbaijani 
soldiers, with heavy machinery, destroy the last evidence of
Armenian presence in Nakhichevan, the historical Armenian province which 
together with Nagorno Karabakh was given away to the neighbouring 
Azerbaijani Republic. 

Jugha's cemetry before destruction

As a result of the implemented Soviet policy, Nakhichevan was at last depleted 
of its entire Armenian population. The clip confirms firmly the fact that the organiser of this cultural genocide is none other than the Azerbaijani government. Obviously, Azerbaijan is firmly determined to prevent “another Karabakh” by erasing the slightest indication of Armenian existence in Nakhichevan. The living Armenians have since long time ago forced to leave the region, but apparently there is also a fear of the dead and buried Armenians and their cries beyond the grave.

Nakhichevan is an exclave which belongs to Azerbaijan but Armenia’s territory separates them apart. Nakhichevan borders, however, on Armenia, Turkey, and Iran. It was from this area that the Persian King Shah Abbas, during the Persian-Ottoman war, forcibly relocated about 150,000 Armenians year 1620 and resettled them in the outskirts of his capital, Isfahan.

The place for this barbarian action caught on tape is a cemetery with thousands of Khatchkars, “Cross stones”, invaluable historical and cultural monuments from the period between 15th and 16th centuries.

Several Armenian organisations and authorities, among other the Foreign Ministry, have handed in official protests to UNESCO and other international organisation, but also to the US embassy in Azerbaijan.

This action makes one to recall the recent desecrations of Jewish cemeteries in different European cities. But unlike the immediate media coverage and attention given to these criminal acts it seems that no one bothers to care about this last act of cleansing the last evidence of Armenians in Nakhichevan.

Will the world and Europe just stand by and watch while this rape of history takes place?




Here  you can see the movie clips

Jugha on GHN

Now you can find materials on  popular web site 


http://globalheritagefund.org/ (Global Heritage Network), 


which  represents  Cultural Genocide in Jugha

The Jugha cemetery was a unique collection of several thousand carved stone crosses (khachkars) on Azerbaijan’s southern border with Iran. But...


Between 10-16 December 2005 over a hundred uniformed men destroyed the Djulfa cemetery using sledgehammers, cranes, and trucks.


An armenian medieval  cemetery regarded as one of the wonders of the Caucasus has been 


erased from the Earth in an act of cultural vandalism likened to the Taleban blowing up the 


Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan in 2001.

  Destruction of the statue by Taliban  
One of the two Buddahs of Bamiyan in 1976                                                                                                    After it was destroyed    




                                       

Armenian medieval khachkars. Jugha cemetry                                                                                                 December 2005. Destroying  of Armenian khachkars by azeri soldiers

  

Jugha's cross-stones and Buddha's statue don't exist anymore because of CULTURAL GENOCIDE

Destruction of the Armenian Cemetery at Djulfa

December 2005

Intangible Cultural Heritage committee completes examination of nominations for UNESCO Lists

With the inscription of the Armenian cross-stones art. Symbolism and craftsmanship of Khachkars, presented by Armenia, the Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage today finished the examination of 47 nominations presented by 29 countries for inscription on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. It now includes 213 inscribed elements.

Khachkars are outdoor steles carved from stone by craftspeople in Armenia and communities in the Armenian diaspora. They act as a focal point for worship, as memorial stones and as relics facilitating communication between the secular and divine. Khachkars reach 1.5 metres in height, and have an ornamentally carved cross in the middle, resting on the symbol of a sun or wheel of eternity, accompanied by vegetative-geometric motifs, carvings of saints and animals. Khachkars are created usually using local stone and carved using chisel, die, sharp pens and hammers. The carvings are then ground using fine sand. Small breaks and rough surfaces are eliminated by plaster of clay or lime, and then painted. Once finished, the Khachkar is erected during a small religious ceremony. After being blessed and anointed, the Khachkar is believed to possess holy powers and can provide help, protection, victory, long life, remembrance and mediation towards salvation of the soul. Among more than 50,000 Khachkars in Armenia, each has its own pattern, and no two are alike. Khachkar craftsmanship is transmitted through families or from master to apprentice, teaching the traditional methods and patterns, while encouraging regional distinctiveness and individual improvisation.

As for the List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding, four new elements have been added for a total of 16.

Source:

 Use Correct Maps of Armenia! (Artsakh = Armenia)

ST. SARGIS MONASTERY OF GAG CASTLE: THE NEXT VICTIM OF THE WIDE-SPREAD ANNIHILATION OF "ALBANIAN" MONUMENTS

 Years ago the Azerbaijani researchers made every possible endeavour to present the Armenian historical monuments located on the territory of the Republic of Azerbaijan as Albanian ones: between the 1970s and 80's, Buniatov, Geyushev, Akhundov, Neymatova, Mammadova and other "scholars" published a great number of books and articles ascribing the inseparable parts of Armenian culture such as Gandzasar, Dadivank, Amaras, the monasteries of St. Yeghishe the Apostle, Targmanchats (of the Holy Translators), Khachakap District, Northern Artsakh, Jugha Cemetery with its several thousands of cross-stones and even St. Sargis of Gag Castle to the Albanian people. 
    Indeed, the Armenians are well-aware of the fact that these scientific falsifications pursue a purely political objective: by attributing the Christian monuments that can hardly be anyhow connected with the Azeris' stock-breeding nomadic forefathers to the Albanians, i.e. their alleged ancestors, the aforementioned scholars aim at declaring the Azerbaijani people heir to this cultural legacy. Thus, with a single stroke of the pen, a good number of Armenian churches and tens of thousands of cross-stones turned into Albanian kilises' ('churches' in Turkish) and "khachdashes" ('cross-stones' in Turkish). Nowadays the Azeris have adopted another policy: they no longer make any attempts to attribute the Armenian cultural monuments to the Albanians: instead, they are busy with annihilating the very monuments once declared Albanian. 
    With the outbreak of Artsakh's Liberation Struggle, the Azerbaijani authorities drastically changed their policy on the Armenian historical monuments: disguising their nature of vandals and barbarians, they commenced demolishing the centuries-old monuments of Armenian culture throughout the Republic of Azerbaijan. We are, unfortunately, unable to determine the actual extent of destruction: we get information only about those monuments that are somehow seen from the Armenian side of the border due to their position, while the fate of all those located far from the frontier zones remains uncertain. 
   In the recent few years, the Armenian press has periodically written about the continual demolition of the historical cemetery of Jugha that began in 1998. Despite the repeated appeals, however, the annihilation of the necropolis with its over 3,000 standing cross-stones was not prevented: moreover, it was consigned to final obliteration in 2002. 
    Within a few years, the unique monument complex the Armenians had created with the sweat of their brow in their historical homeland was actually levelled with the ground, that being perpetrated in broad daylight, before the entire civilized world. We learnt about what had been committed only thanks to the fact that the cemetery was situated on the left bank of the river Araks, thus being clearly seen from the opposite, i.e. Iranian bank of the river. 
    Yes, the famous cemetery of Jugha was totally annihilated, but the Azeri vandals who are armed with bulldozers still have too much "work" to do since the Armenian land where they once penetrated abounds in other monuments built throughout many centuries. 
    In fact, at present we are doomed to witness the destruction of our own culture since the Azeri Turks are diligently performing the only role they have had ever since they made themselves comfortable in our historical homeland, i.e. demolition... Faithful to their mission, the Turks are at present "working" in St. Sargis Monastery of Gag Castle in the same spirit. 

Yes...It's GENOCIDE

http://anca.org/yesitsgenocide

Cultural Genocide

Acts and measures undertaken to destroy any nations’ or ethnic groups’ culture is called, ‘cultural genocide’. The word ‘Genocide’ coined by Raphael Lemkin, does not only refer to the physical extermination of a national or religious group, but also its national, spiritual and cultural destruction. The concept of a cultural genocide has not yet been accepted into the 1948 UN Convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of Genocide. 

Many proven facts concomitant with the massacres and deportation are witness to the fact that the Young Turk government premeditated and planed a systematic method aiming to destroy the material testimonies of the Armenian civilization. Realizing the role of the church and Christian faith within the Armenian nation, they knowingly massacred Armenian clergymen, destroyed churches, monasteries and other properties of church, alongwith thousands of medieval handwritten illuminated manuscripts. 

An Arab eye witnesses to the Armenian Genocide, Fayez el Husseyn, writes in his memoirs

Культурный геноцид в Армении, оставшейся без армян

Культурный геноцид, термин, введенный во второй половине XX века, используется для обозначения преднамеренного создания социально-культурных условий для искусственного стирания национальной и культурной идентичности народа. Согласно официальным данным, составленным и представленным армянской Патриархией Константинополя турецкому правительству в 1912-1913 годах, на территории Османской империи насчитывалось более 2000 церквей и монастырей (в том числе уникальные ранние христианские памятники IV-V веков). Их большая часть была ограблена, сожжена и разрушена во время Геноцида армян. С прекращением этнических чисток армян политика младотурков, направленная на разрушение их культурного наследия с каждым годом набирала обороты. После массового убийства и изгнания армян турецкие власти продолжали удалять, камень за камнем, свидетельства тысячелетней армянской архитектурной и художественной истории. Большое количество памятников архитектуры были разрушены или преобразованы в мечети и караван-сараи.

Один из свидетелей армянских погромов - арабский юрист Файез эль Гусейн пишет в своих воспоминаниях: "После армянских погромов правительство учредило комиссии, которые занимаются продажей брошенного имущества. Армянские культурные ценности продаются по ничтожной цене... Однажды я пошел в церковь, чтобы увидеть, как осуществляется продажа этих вещей. Двери армянских школ закрыты. Научные книги используются турками на рынках для упаковки сыра, хурмы, семечек..."

-

The roughly 1500 years-old cemetery of Djulfa before the destruction of its c. 5000 cross stones.

In 1998 about 800 Katchkars were removed, a process temporarily halted following protests from UNESCO.

See more 

Destruction of Armenian Monuments in Nakhichevan Cultural Genocide

The destruction of the Armenian monuments in Old Djulfa is cultural genocide, Armenian Deputy Foreign Minister Gegham Gharibjanian stated at news conference in Yerevan April 5, 2006 . Laying an emphasis on the difference between Iran, the representative of an ancient civilization, and Azerbaijan he remarked that Azerbaijan keeps on the destruction of the Armenian cultural monuments on its territory. "I want to mark the fact that the Iranian authorities treat the maintenance of the monuments belonging to other nations with great responsibility," he said, reported Novosti-Armenia.


Source:

''GLOBAL VOICES'' about Jugha (Julfa)

Azerbaijan: Destruction of Ancient Cemetery Commemorated

Three years after a cemetery dating back to the 9th Century was deliberately destroyed in the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhichevan, bloggers recall an ancient culture annihilated and condemn the world for closing its eyes to what many consider to be an official attempt to rewrite history.

NoThingfjord, a Turkish blog, writes:

Today is the commemoration of the 3rd anniversary of Djulfa's destruction. …This [is] not only a crime against Armenian culture, but against our collective cultural heritage as humankind. Don't let it go unnoticed.

 Between 10-16 December 2005 over a hundred uniformed men were videotaped destroying the Djulfa cemetery using sledgehammers, cranes, and trucks. The video was taken from across the border in Iran.


More than just a loss to global culture, Ivan Kondratiev [RU] says that Djulfa's destruction was meant to change the story of Nakhichevan's indigenous heritage.

Азербайджанские власти на протяжении всего советского периода старались уничтожить этот некрополь, поскольку для них он был всего лишь свидетельством о том, что именно армяне были хозяевами этой территории на протяжении веков, вопреки тому, что говорилось в азербайджанских советских мифах о собственной “древности”… Это кладбище, вполне достойное названия чуда, было даже не внесено в реестр архитектурных памятников Азербайджана… После распада СССР, во время карабахского конфликта, продолжалось разорение кладбища, и, наконец, оно было окончательно уничтожено….

 The Azeri authorities throughout all Soviet period tried to destroy this necropolis as for them it was only a testament that Armenians were owners of this territory throughout centuries in spite of Azerbaijan's Soviet myths about own “antiquity”… This cemetery, quite worthy to be called a wonder, was not even placed on the register of architectural monuments of Azerbaijan… After USSR's collapse, during the Karabakh conflict, the cemetery's demolition continued, and, at last, definitively destroyed….

An Iranian blogger also argues that Djulfa was undesirable evidence of an inconvenient past.

آنان از سنگ قبر ارامنه هم نگذشته اند و با تخریب دوازده هزار قبر با سنگ قبر هایی منحصر به فرد که متعلق به چند قرن پیش بوده و جزئی از میراث فرهنگی ارامنه به حساب می آمد، هیچ اثری از ارمنی نشین بودن آنجا، بجا نگذاشته اند.

 [After acquiring Nakhichevan, Azeris] did not even tolerate Armenian gravestones. They destroyed twelve thousand Armenian graves. These unique gravestones with several centuries’ history were part of Armenian cultural heritage. However, through destruction of these gravestones, [Azeris] destroyed all signs indicating the existence of Armenians in that land. [translated by Loosineh M.]

 iArarat, remembers Djulfa by discussing Robert Bevan’s The Destruction of Memory: Architecture at War, a book that was “part of a class I teach at a Texas university on nationalism and ethno-political conflicts.”

[…]

While reading Bevan’s book I was inevitably reminded of the destruction of the medieval Armenian cemetery in Jugha, presently in Azerbaijan. Azeri soldiers at the command of their superiors without as much as blinking an eye would embark at destroying and erasing the last vestige of the Armenian civilization in that territory as if the Armenians had never as much as existed there, as if Armenians had never as much as created anything, something to celebrate their faith and commemorate their dead…

 The Stiletto, an award-winning blog posts a well-researched account of Djulfa's destruction and attempts by Azerbaijan to deny it ever existed.

Azerbaijan is being blamed for the destruction of a unique cemetery

A MEDIEVAL cemetery regarded as one of the wonders of the Caucasus has been erased from the Earth in an act of cultural vandalism likened to the Taleban blowing up the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan in 2001.

The Jugha cemetery was a unique collection of several thousand carved stone crosses on Azerbaijan’s southern border with Iran. But after 18 years of conflict between Azerbaijan and its western neighbour, Armenia, it has been confirmed that the cemetery has vanished.

The Institute for War and Peace Reporting, a London-based non-governmental organisation that supports independent journalism, said that one of its staff had recently been to the highly restricted site.

Destroying of Armenian khachkars by azeri soldiers

Where once stood between 2,700 and 10,000 intricately carved headstones — khachkars — dating from the 9th to the 16th centuries, there was only a dry patch of earth, said the institute (www.iwpr.net). It was the first independent confirmation of what Armenia has long alleged — that Azerbaijani authorities have razed the cemetery since the two former Soviet republics began a bloody border war in 1988.

The war ended in a ceasefire in 1994, with 30,000 dead and a million displaced, but still simmers over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, which is held by Armenia but internationally recognised as Azerbaijan. Foreign organisations had been unable to visit the cemetery because it is in Nakhichevan, a tiny enclave of Azerbaijan cut off by Armenia and Iran and accessible only by air.

Azerbaijan has repeatedly dismissed Armenia’s allegations as scaremongering and in turn accused Armenia of destroying hundreds of Muslim sites. President Aliyev of Azerbaijan angrily dismissed reports

JUGHA ERASED FROM THE FACE OF THE EARTH

Tuesday, October 17th, an international delegation comprised of representatives of different National Parliaments and a Scottish history-of-art specialist, were received by Mr.Kotchiro Matsuura, Director-General of UNESCO, from whom they will be solemnly requesting an international investigation and open denunciation of the crime perpetrated on the memorial site of Jugha (Djoulfa/Julfa) by the army of Azerbaijan.

• The delegation was formed at the behest of the Parliamentary Group Switzerland-Armenia – mainly the Co-Chairmen – the National Councillors Dominique de Buman (Vice-Chairman of the Christian Democratic-Party) and Ueli Leuenberger (Vice-Chairman of the Green Party) – with the support of Mr. Charles Aznavour, Ambassador of Armenia to UNESCO. The Parliamentarians will submit to the Director-General exhaustive documentation on the subject, as well as a signed Memorandum in which five recommendations will be presented to the state of Azerbaijan, among which, the construction of a Christian memorial on the site of the old cemetery. If Azerbaijan did not answer these recommendations, the delegation of the members of Parliament will ask the exclusion of Azerbaïdjan of UNESCO with arbitration of the European governments, Switzerland, Russia and Canada.
  
  
  
  Moreover, the organizers of this exceptional meeting, regretted not assistance of the Armenian government.
  /Jean Eckian – Paris, France/
  On January 23rd, 2006, French deputy François Rochebloine (UDF),recalled in his intervention at the Council of Europe:[…] «We have

Destruction of the Armenian Cemetery at Djulfa

For a long time there have been complaints about the destruction of Armenian monuments and sites in Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey, three of the neighbouring countries of Armenia. A particularly sad example is the destruction of the Armenian cemetery in the former town of Djulfa, situated in the south of Nachitchevan, a region under the sovereignty of Azerbaijan. This cemetery, which had been in use from the early Middle Ages to the destruction of the town in 1605, was an outstanding testimony of Armenian culture because of thousands of tombstones mostly from the 15th and 16th centuries in the shape of so-called Khatchkars. The destruction process, which began in 1998 when 800 Khatchkars were removed, was temporarily halted following protests from UNESCO, but in November 2002 it was taken up again. When ICOMOS was informed and given photos of this barbaric act in a remote frontier area by RAA (Research on Armenian Architecture) in January 2003 and by ICOMOS Armenia in February 2003, the destruction, which cannot have been carried through without the consent of the Azerbaijan government, was already completed: "On January 10th Mr Haghnazarian [author of the following report] was called by the very distressed Armenian Bishop of Tabriz (Iran) who informed him that he went to the Iranian side of the river Araxes opposite the cemetery of Djulfa some days ago to see with his own eyes what had seemed incredible to him: The 1500-year-old cemetery had completely been flattened in the meantime."

There only remains the hope that under the guidance of UNESCO it will be possible to investigate the situation on the spot and to take care of the remains of the tombstones, transported away by Azerbaijan railways probably to be used as material for building measures. Hopefully, strong protest will at least prevent the demolition of more Armenian heritage sites in Azerbaijan in the future. The intentional destruction of the cemetery of Djulfa should be considered as a crime against the common heritage of humanity. Apart from that all that remains is deep sorrow for the irreplaceable loss.
Here is the report of RAA: