"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.

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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.

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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.

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

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

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. 

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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.

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