Armenian official: Azerbaijan razes Great Patriotic War memorial to the ground

PanARMENIAN.Net - Azerbaijan has razed to the ground the Glory Memorial in Berdzor, Nagorno Karabakh, perpetuating the memory of those killed in the Great Patriotic War, President of the Armenian National Assembly Alen Simonyan said on Twitter Monday, May 30.

“I wonder if there will be a reaction to the destruction of monuments dedicated to those who fell in the Second World War, reports or talk shows, where patriots will rant and rave on the desecration of our great victory,” Simonyan said.

“Or maybe we’ll get by with an appeal to the parties to observe restraint, per usual, huh?

“Double standards, stupidity and greed, and then a surprised facial expression asking - what and when did it go wrong?!”

During the Second Karabakh War, Azerbaijani forces launched two targeted attacks on the Holy Savior Ghazanchetsots Cathedral in Shushi. After the city came under Azerbaijan's control, the domes of another Armenian church commonly known as the Green Chapel were destroyed too. Azerbaijan earlier "restored" a church by replacing its Armenian inscription with glass art. Furthermore, Azeri President Ilham Aliyev visited the region of Hadrut in territories occupied by Azerbaijan and declared his intention to "renovate" a 12th century Armenian church, which he claimed to be "an Albanian church". Aliyev went so far as to accuse Armenians of leaving "fake inscriptions" in the Armenian language.

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.