Azerbaijan feels right demolishing Christian cemeteries

PanARMENIAN.Net - Under the pretext of building a highway Baku demolishes a Christian cemetery (the Nariman cemetery), where Armenians, Jews and Russians were buried.



Chief engineer of Civil Service Trust Firuz Askerov said "the hearsay that bulldozers have razed to the ground the graves at the Nariman cemetery is false." "They work to lay a way through the site of displaced graves," he said.



According to him, "134 graves have been replaced from the Nariman cemetery to the Govsany cemetery." Askerov said "besides Azeri graves there were also graves of Russians, Georgians, Tatarts, Molokans, etc." (However, he failed to mention about Armenians). He emphasized that "only those graves which lie on the territory covered by the contraction plan will be replaced," APA reports.



Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper reports that although local authorities assure of reinterment, photos in Internet show a complete dump. The photographers say the bulldozers just raze the graves to the ground depriving the relatives to rebury the remains.



The city administration says exhumation and reinterment is performed in accord with ethnic and religious traditions in the presence of relatives of the deceased. Meanwhile, the Jewish News Agency reports that "observance of Jewish traditions is restricted to the fact that grave-diggers throw the ashes into sacks and then give them to the relatives."