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

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