ETHNOCIDE

Armenian aggression against Azerbaijan has been going on for a quarter of a century now. The consequences of it are the occupation of a fifth of our state's territory, the ethnic cleansing of the lands seized by the enemy, as a result of which tens of thousands of civilians have perished and more than one million people have been displaced and found themselves in the position of refugees. But the Armenian aggression is not only accompanied by unprecedented cruelty towards the Azerbaijani population, including women, children and old people. Valuable objects of our people's material and intellectual culture are being destroyed, which are not just the heritage of the Azerbaijanis themselves, but of the Islamic world and the whole of mankind.

It is not just in our time that Armenian vandalism has sadly become notorious. The destruction of monuments of Azerbaijani culture by the Armenian nationalists dates back to the beginning of the 19th century when tsarist Russia carried out the mass resettlement of Armenians from the Ottoman Empire and Iran on the territory of Azerbaijan. For the Azerbaijanis the menacing "alarm bell" sounded when the "Armenian Region" was set up in the Iravan [Yerevan] and Naxcivan khanates conquered by Russia, which had been Azerbaijani lands since time immemorial. From that time onwards, i.e. the 1830s, the Armenianisation of Azerbaijani place names started, the destruction of monuments of Azerbaijan's material culture (including mosques, palaces, tombs and cemeteries) began, and Armenian authors started to falsify the history of the Southern Caucasus in an attempt to prove not only the right of Armenians to live in this region, but also the fact that lands belonging to Azerbaijan and other peoples since time immemorial were actually Armenian lands.

The handing over of Albanian churches to the Armenian Church as a result of the Russian authorities' dissolution of the latter in 1836 was a considerable landmark on the shameful path of the immigrant Armenians' acquisition of the territory and cultural values of others. The destruction of the Albanian archives began, as well as the changing of Albanian inscriptions on the church buildings to Armenian ones and other actions of unprecedented attacks on culture which were called upon to convince people that the Christian churches on the territory of Azerbaijan were allegedly Armenian ones.

As the Armenian population grew on the historical lands of Azerbaijan, primarily on the territory of the former Iravan Khanate, and later when the Armenian (Ararat) Republic was set up in 1918, the destruction of our people's cultural heritage became large-scale in character. The unique statues of horses, the drums, the stone carvings on Azerbaijani themes in the Iravan, Daralayaz and Zangezur districts, thousands of monuments of art and gravestones in Western Azerbaijan were all subjected to violent desecration by the Armenian vandals. This trend is continuing even in the most recent times as a result of the state policy of setting up an Armenian state on the historical lands of Azerbaijan. The outcome of this has been that there is not a single historical or cultural monument or gravestone created by the hands of our ancestors left in Western Azerbaijan today.

The Iravan fortress, which was erected in 1504 by military leader of Shah Ismail Sefevi Ravan qulu Khan (with whose name the fortress is properly speaking connected), Irevan's famous mosques - the Juma mosque (built in 1606 on the orders of Shah Abbas Sefevi), Rejep Pasha mosque (1725), Abbas Mirza mosque (beginning of 18th century), Novruz Ali Khan mosque, Haggi Jafar Bey mosque, Mahammad Sertib-khan mosque - these and other Muslim shrines have been destroyed by the Armenian vandals over the last two centuries.

The Iravan Sardar Palace erected in the time of the Sefevids' and Gajars were outstanding monuments of Azerbaijani and Islamic architecture. European travellers referred to this palace as the heart of the Irevan fortress. The tombs of Saadlu emirs, which were located in the village of Jafarabad in Zangibasar administrative district were a symbol showing that the territory had belonged to Azerbaijan. But these and other great creative works of Azerbaijan's material culture, to put it more broadly, of the whole of Turkic and Muslim culture, have been destroyed by the Armenian authorities.

But Armenian expansionism, which has not left a single Azerbaijani nor a single monument of Azerbaijani culture on the territory of Western Azerbaijan, has not limited its inhumane ambitions solely to the territory of Iravan, Goycha and Zangezur, age-old Azerbaijani lands, on which the Armenian state was set up by its extremely powerful foreign backers. The towns and settlements of Nagornyy Karabakh became the targets of the Armenian state and have been under Armenian occupation for almost a quarter of a century now.  

The administrative centres of the occupied districts, including the pearls of Nagornyy Karabakh, the towns of Susa and Agdam, are being allowed to fall into ruin. Kalbalayi Behbudali spring, Damirovlu Pir, Turba Soltanbaba, 12 bridges, 126 cemeteries, hundreds of gravestone, the historical and architectural open-air museum in Susa, as well as the village mosques in the settlements of Haci Abbas, Haci Yusifli, Yol Qala, Xoca Marcanli, Kocarli, Seyidli, Mamay, Govharaga, Asagi Govharaga, Malibayli, the caravanserai in the village of Sahbulag and many other monuments have been destroyed in the last few years and decades by the Armenian nationalists.

Eight museums, 31 libraries, 17 clubs and eight community centres have been destroyed in Susa. Thousands of valuable exhibits have been removed from the town's history museum and from the Shusha branches of the State Museum of Applied Art and the Carpet Museum. The house-museums of the great composer Uzeyir Hacibayov, the great singer Bul Bul, the outstanding musician Qurban  Pirimov, the prominent scholar, poet and artist Mir Movsum Navvab, the major man of letters and social and political figure Abdurrahim bay Haqverdiyev, the palace complex of Xursudbanu Natavan, the residences of Firudin bay Kocharli and the Zohrabbayovs, the mausoleum of the great poet and vizier of the Karabakh Khanate Molla Panah Vaqif have been looted and destroyed.

A revealing demonstration of the Armenian aggressors' "boldness" is their "fight" against the monuments of Azerbaijani cultural figures that once embellished Susa. These monuments were shot with assault rifles. In Agdam, the residence of the founder of the Karabakh Khanate, Panah-khan, and the Juma Mosque, the palaces of Hamza Sultan and Sultan Ahmad, mosques, churches and shrines, ancient stone monuments, graves and burial mounds have been destroyed. During the bombing of Agdam the only Museum of Bread in the USSR was demolished. The priceless collections of Agdam, Kalbacar, Qubadli, Zangilan, Cabrayil, Fizuli and Xocali [Khojaly] museums of local lore, history and economy museums were looted by the Armenian invaders.

After the genocide of the residents of Khojaly committed by Armenian armed units in February 1992, the burial mounds and other archaeological monuments dating back to the Bronze Age of the Xocali-Gadabay culture were damaged. Ancient human settlements such as the Azix and Taglar caves, the Qarakopak and Uzarliktapa burial mounds are being deliberately destroyed and used for military purposes.

In total, since the beginning of the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict and the Armenian occupation of Azerbaijani territory 1,200 historical and architectural monuments have been destroyed by the Armenian aggressors, 27 museums have been looted and more than 100,000 exhibits have been taken away to Armenia. On the occupied territories 152 religious monuments and 62 mosques have been destroyed by the Armenian invaders, as well as 4.6 million books from 927 libraries, among them the Holy Koran and rare Islamic manuscripts. Many mosques have been used by Armenian occupiers as storehouses and pigsties, which is a pointed insult to the Islamic religion.

One manifestation of Armenian aggression against the cultural heritage of Azerbaijan is the impudent claim that Azerbaijani carpets, musical compositions, literature and even dishes from Azerbaijani cuisine are actually of Armenian origin.

Armenian vandalism is not only contrary to the elementary idea of human moral behaviour, but to the norms of international law as well, in particular the 1954 Hague "Conven-tion for the protection of cultural property in the event of an armed conflict" and the 1972 "UNESCO Convention concerning the protection of world cultural and natural heritage".

Azerbaijan is trying to get the world community to scathingly condemn the Armenian aggression and Armenian vandalism. Precisely as a result of the efforts of official Baku in 2005 and 2010, an official fact-finding mission was carried out by the OSCE [Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe] which confirmed that monuments of Azerbaijani culture and Islamic heritage had been destroyed by the Armenian invaders. Condemnation of the occupation of Azerbaijani territories by Armenia and the destruction of Islamic monuments by the Armenian aggressors is also contained in a number of resolutions of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). There is every ground for hoping that the relevant assessment of the consequences of the Armenian occupation will also be reflected in the documents of the forthcoming summits and sessions of foreign ministers of the OIC countries, as well as the forums of other prestigious international organisations.