US Commission on International Religious Freedom urges government to allocate funds for protection of Artsakh cultural sites

The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) in its annual report called on the US government to fund the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the US Embassy in Azerbaijan to restore, preserve, and protect places of worship and other religious or cultural sites in Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding areas.

The report recommends that the US government put Azerbaijan on the list of Countries of Particular Concern for its “systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom, as defined in the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA)”.

The report notes that the chairman of the official State Committee for Work on Religious Affairs of Azerbaijan, Mubariz Gurbanli, urged Armenian Apostolic Church priests to leave the Dadivank Monastery, falsely claiming that they had no ties to this religious site.