Hyperallergic: Azerbaijan desecrates and appropriates Armenian churches and tombstones under the guise of so-called restoration

Since Azerbaijani forces invaded the Republic of Artsakh, also known as Nagorno-Karabakh, on September 19, forcing more than 100,000 Armenians from their ancestral homelands in an act that has been described as “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide,” at least three Armenian cemeteries and one 19th-century church in the region have been damaged by new and expanding construction work, writes Hyperallergic’s Maya Pontone.

Pontone notes that satellite monitoring by the Cornell University-based research program Caucasus Heritage Watch (CHW) detected that between October 5 and November 3, bulldozers paved a road through the Yerevan Gates Cemetery in Shushi.

“Armenian inscriptions in religious sites have frequently been targeted by the forces of the Azerbaijani dictatorship, which is seeking to erase these markers of Armenian history.

Using a pseudo-scientific theory that these traces of Armenian existence are fictitious, the Azerbaijani government has supported the desecration and cultural reappropriation of churches and tombstones under the guise of so-called restoration,” she adds.

It is also noted that CHW researchers reported damage to another historic site in Shushi during October, the Ghazanchetsots Cemetery.

“The strategies of desecration and erasure are very specific and very targeted,” writes Pontone, quoting Christina Maranci, Mashtots Professor of Armenian Studies at Harvard University.