Azerbaijanis hint will desecrate Christian Armenian monuments

PanARMENIAN.Net - Azerbaijanis have hinted they are going to inflict serious damage on the Armenian monastery of Dadivank and other monuments once they are handed over to the Azerbaijani side. For now, Russian peacekeepers are deployed in the area to protect the monastery.

According to Azerbaijani media publications, Chairman of Azerbaijan's Albanian-Udi Christian Community Robert Mobili, who also claims to be a geologist, has argued that "new crosses have been installed in the church" of Dadivank, which he maintained is a Udi place of worship, and not an Armenian one. This theory is supported and widely disseminated by the authorities of Azerbaijan, who go to great lengths to erase traces of indigenous Armenian culture and .

Mobili said Azerbaijan will "restore" all "our" religious monuments he claimed were "destroyed" by Armenians.

During the recent military hostilities, Azerbaijani forces launched two targeted attacks on the Holy Savior Ghazanchetsots Cathedral in Shushi. After taking control of the city, they destroyed the domes of Saint John the Baptist Church. Azerbaijanearlier "restored" a church by replacing its Armenian inscription with glass art.

Concerns about the preservation of cultural sites in Nagorno-Karabakh are made all the more urgent by the Azerbaijani government’s history of systemically destroying indigenous Armenian heritage—acts of both warfare and historical revisionism. The Azerbaijani government has secretly destroyed a striking number of cultural and religious artifacts in the late 20th century. Within Nakhichevan alone, a historically Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan, Azerbaijani forces destroyed at least 89 medieval churches, 5,840 khachkars (Armenian cross stones) and 22,000 historical tombstones between 1997 and 2006.