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