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
