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'''Khachkar destruction in Nakhichevan''' refers to accusations by [[Armenia]] against [[Azerbaijan]] of embarking on a campaign beginning in 1998 to December 2005 to completely demolish the cemetery of finely carved Armenian [[khachkar]]s in the town of [[Julfa, Azerbaijan (town)|Julfa]], [[Nakhichevan]], an exclave of Azerbaijan. Claims by the Armenians that Azerbaijan had undertaken a systematic campaign to destroy and remove the monuments first arose in late 1998 and those charges were renewed in 2002 and 2005.
'''Khachkar destruction in Nakhichevan''' refers to accusations by [[Armenia]] against [[Azerbaijan]] of embarking on a campaign beginning in 1998 to December 2005 to completely demolish the cemetery of finely carved Armenian [[khachkar]]s in the town of [[Julfa, Azerbaijan (town)|Julfa]], [[Nakhichevan]], an exclave of Azerbaijan. Claims by the Armenians that Azerbaijan had undertaken a systematic campaign to destroy and remove the monuments first arose in late 1998 and those charges were renewed in 2002 and 2005.


Numerous appeals were filed by both Armenians and international organizations, condemning the Azerbaijani government and calling it to desist from such activity. In 2006, Azerbaijan barred [[European Parliament]] members from investigating the claims, charging them with a "biased and hysterical approach" to the issue;<ref name=TheIndependent>Castle, Stephen. [http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article621782.ece Azerbaijan 'flattened' sacred Armenian site]. ''[[The Independent]]''. [[April 16]], [[2006]]. Retrieved [[April 16]], [[2007]].</ref> however most scholars and international organizations agree to the conclusion that the historical Armenian monuments have indeed been destroyed.
Numerous appeals were filed by both Armenians and international organizations, condemning the Azerbaijani government and calling it to desist from such activity. In 2006, Azerbaijan barred [[European Parliament]] members from investigating the claims, charging them with a "biased and hysterical approach" to the issue and stating that it would only accept a delegation if it visited Armenian-controlled territory as well.<ref name=TheIndependent>Castle, Stephen. [http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article621782.ece Azerbaijan 'flattened' sacred Armenian site]. ''[[The Independent]]''. [[April 16]], [[2006]]. Retrieved [[April 16]], [[2007]].</ref>


==Background==
==Background==

Revision as of 06:02, 23 April 2007

Julfa is located close to the Iranian border in the Nakhichevan Autonomous Republic of Azerbaijan.

Khachkar destruction in Nakhichevan refers to accusations by Armenia against Azerbaijan of embarking on a campaign beginning in 1998 to December 2005 to completely demolish the cemetery of finely carved Armenian khachkars in the town of Julfa, Nakhichevan, an exclave of Azerbaijan. Claims by the Armenians that Azerbaijan had undertaken a systematic campaign to destroy and remove the monuments first arose in late 1998 and those charges were renewed in 2002 and 2005.

Numerous appeals were filed by both Armenians and international organizations, condemning the Azerbaijani government and calling it to desist from such activity. In 2006, Azerbaijan barred European Parliament members from investigating the claims, charging them with a "biased and hysterical approach" to the issue and stating that it would only accept a delegation if it visited Armenian-controlled territory as well.[1]

Background

Nakhichevan is an exclave which belongs to Azerbaijan, but Armenia's territory separates the two apart. The exclave also borders Turkey and Iran. It was from this area that the Persian King Shah Abbas forcibly relocated between 250,000 and 300,000 Armenians from 1604–05 and resettled them in the outskirts of his capital, Isfahan.[2][3][4] Much of the Armenian cultural heritage, including the khachkars which dated back to the 9th to 16th centuries,[5] was left behind as nearly the region's whole Armenian population was moved.

Destruction

Initial claims

An image of the khachkar cemetery in Julfa taken by an Armenian historian prior to the destruction of the monuments.

Armenia first brought up charges against the Azerbaijani government for destroying khachkars in 1998 in the town of Julfa. Several years earlier, Armenia had supported Armenian separatists fighting for their independence in the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan, both former Soviet republics, in a six year war. The war concluded in 1994 with a cease fire that resulted in Azerbaijan losing 14% of its territory, including those outside of Nagorno-Karabakh and the de facto but unrecognized state of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. Since the end of the war, enmity against Armenians in Azerbaijan has built up. According to the Archaeological Institute of America, the loss of Nagorno-Karabakh to the Armenians has "played a part in this attempt to eradicate the historical Armenian presence in Nakhichevan."[6]

Azerbaijan waived Armenia's claims that the Khachkars were destroyed when they first introduced in 1998 and claimed that it was fabricating lies. Arpiayr Petrosyan, a member of the organization Armenian Architecture in Iran, brought forward the claims when he witnessed and filmed bulldozers destroying the monuments.

Reacting to the claims, the government of Iran, expressed concern over the destruction of the monuments and filed a protest to the Nakhichevan Autonomous Republic's government (NAR). Hasan Zeynalov, the permanent representative of the NAR in Baku stated that the Armenian allegation was "another dirty lie of the Armenians." The government of Azerbaijan did not initially directly respond to the accusations but did state that the "vandalism is not in the spirit of Azerbaijan."[7] Armenia's claims provoked international scrutiny that according to Armenian Minister of Culture Gagik Gyurdjian, helped to temporarily stop the destruction.[8]

Armenian archaeologists and experts on the khachkars in Nakhichevan stated that when they first visited the region in 1987, prior to the break up of the Soviet Union, the monuments had been largely been preserved and the region itself had as many as "27,000 monasteries, churches, khachkars, tombstones" among other cultural artifacts.[8] By 1998, the number of khachkars was said to have been reduced to 2,700.[9]

Renewed claims in 2003

In 2003, Armenians renewed their protests claiming that Azerbaijan had restarted the destruction of the monuments. On December 4, 2002, Armenian historians and archaeologists met and filed a formal complaint and appealed to international organizations to investigate their claims.[9]

The old Cemetery of Julfa is known to specialists to have housed as many as 10,000 of these carved khachkar headstones, up to 2,000 of which were still intact after an earlier outbreak of vandalism on the same site in 2002. Eyewitness accounts of the ongoing demolition indicate at the organized nature of the operation, qualifying it as cleansing. In December 2005, Iranian Armenians documented more video evidence across the Araks river, which partially demarcates the border between Nakhichevan and Iran, stating that it showed Azeri troops had finished the destruction of the remaining khachkars by using sledgehammers and axes.

International response

File:Azeridus.jpg
Azerbaijani soldiers allegedly finishing off the remaining of Armenian khachkars.

Azerbaijan's government has faced a flurry of condemnation since the charges were first revealed. When the claims were first brought up in 1998, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) ordered the destruction of the monuments in Julfa to cease.[6] The complaints also brought forward similar appeals to end the activity to stop by the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS).

In reaction to the charges brought forward by Armenians and international organizations, Azerbaijan claims that Armenians never existed in those territories. In December 2005, Zeynalov stated in a BBC interview that Armenians "never lived in Nakhichevan, which has been Azerbaijani land from time immemorial, and that's why there are no Armenian cemeteries and monuments and have never been any."[6] Azerbaijan instead contends that the monuments were not of Armenian origin, but of Caucasian Albanian.

In regards to the destruction, according to the Azerbaijani Ambassador to the United States, Khafiz Pashayev, the videos and photographs that have surfaced do not show the identity of the people nor display what they are actually destroying. Instead, the ambassador asserts that the Armenian side started a propaganda campaign against Azerbaijan to divert attention from the alleged destruction of Azerbaijani monuments in Armenia.[10] The president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliev also denied the charges, calling them "a lie and a provocation."[8]

Numerous non-Armenian scholars however, have condemned the destruction and urged the Azerbaijan government account to give a more fuller account. American anthropologist and Associate Professor of anthropology at the University of Chicago, Adam T. Smith called the removal of the khachkars "a shameful episode in humanity's relation to its past, a deplorable act on the part of the government of Azerbaijan which requires both explanation and repair."[6] Smith and other scholars and several United States Senators signed a letter to UNESCO and other organizations condemning Azerbaijan's government.[11]

In the spring of 2006, a journalist from the Institute for War and Peace Reporting visited the cemetery and confirmed that it had "completely vanished."[8] In the same year, European parliamentary members protested to the Azerbaijani government when they were barred from inspecting the cemetery. Hannes Swoboda, an Austrian socialist MEP and member of the committee denied access to visiting the region, commented that "If they do not allow us to go, we have a clear hint that something bad has happened. If something is hidden we want to ask why. It can only be because some of the allegations are true."[1] Doctor Charles Tannock, a conservative member of the European Parliament for Greater London, echoed those sentiments and compared the destruction to the Buddha statues destroyed by the Taliban in Bamyan, Afghanistan in 2001.[1] He cited in a speech a British architect, Steven Sim, an expert in the region who attested that the video footage shot by the Armenian from the Iranian border was genuine.[12]

Azerbaijan barred the European Parliament because it said it would only accept a delegation if it visited Armenian-controlled territory as well. "We think that if a comprehensive approach is taken to the problems that have been raised," said Azerbaijani foreign ministry spokesman Tahir Tagizade, "it will be possible to study Christian monuments on the territory of Azerbaijan, including in the Nakhichevan Autonomous Republic."[1]

References

  1. ^ a b c d Castle, Stephen. Azerbaijan 'flattened' sacred Armenian site. The Independent. April 16, 2006. Retrieved April 16, 2007.
  2. ^ von Haxthausen, Baron (2000). Transcaucasia: Sketches of the Nations and Races between the Black Sea and the Caspian. Boston: Adamant Media Corporation. p. 252. ISBN 1-4021-8367-4.
  3. ^ Bournoutian, George A (2006). A Concise History of the Armenian People. Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda. pp. 210–211. ISBN 1-5685-9141-1.
  4. ^ Olson, James Stuart (1994). An Ethnohistorical Dictionary of the Russian and Soviet Empires. Westport, CT.: Greenwood. p. 44. ISBN 0-313-27497-5.
  5. ^ Page, Jeremy. Historic graveyard is victim of war. The London Times. April 21, 2006. Retrieved April 17, 2007.
  6. ^ a b c d Pickman, Sarah. Tragedy on the Araxes. Archaeological Institute of America. June 30, 2006. Retrieved April 16, 2007
  7. ^ Wire report to BBC News. Azeris dismiss Iran's concern over Armenian monuments in Nakhichevan. The BBC News in BBC Monitoring Central Asia. December 11, 1998. Retrieved April 16, 2007
  8. ^ a b c d IWPR staff in Nakhichevan, Baku and Yerevan (April 19, 2006). "Azerbaijan: Famous Medieval Cemetery Vanishes". Institute for War and Peace Reporting. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  9. ^ a b Wire report to BBC News. Armenian intellectuals blast "barbaric" destruction of Nakhichevan monuments. The BBC News in BBC Monitoring Central Asia. February 13, 2003. Retrieved April 16, 2007
  10. ^ Regnum News Agency. Will the arrested minister become new leader of opposition? Azerbaijani press digest Regnum News Agency Report. January 20, 2006. Retrieved April 15, 2007.
  11. ^ Smith, Adam T. et al. A copy of the letter in PDF format.
  12. ^ Dr Charles Tannock. Cultural heritage in Azerbaijan. Speech delivered to the Plenary on February 16, 2006. Retrieved April 16, 2007.
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