Parliament discusses destruction of historical and cultural heritage  of Artsakh - MoESCS, MFA, MoJ representatives refuse to attend

ArmInfo. At the initiative of non-partisan MP Taguhi Tovmasyan and MP from the Armenia faction Anna Grigoryan, the Parliament has held discussions on the destruction of the historical and cultural heritage of Nagorno-Karabakh by Azerbaijan.

Representatives of the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Justice were invited to the discussions, but they refused to come. In particular, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Justice immediately refused to participate, the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports initially confirmed participation at the level of the deputy minister, but an hour before the meeting they announced that they would not attend. , said Taguhi Tovmasyan.

Lernik Hovhannisyan, the Chairman of the Diocesan Council of the Artsakh Diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church, presented an overview of the general situation with monuments in the NKR. He noted that there are a total of 5,000 monuments in Artsakh, although these numbers are approximate, as new urban and rural cemeteries are not included in this count.  Hovhannisyan discussed the concept of the Albanian origin of Azerbaijan, put forward by their historian Ziya Bunyadov and promoted by the Azerbaijani side, which attributes Albanian heritage to the Armenian culture of Artsakh. He presented the Azerbaijani Ministry of Culture's website, where Armenian spiritual and cultural monuments are presented as Azerbaijani. In this vein, the Chairman of the Council also mentioned the Azerbaijani president's directive to destroy lithographs and inscriptions on churches, claiming that they were by Armenians. Additionally, the president ordered the destruction of everything that was built in Artsakh after 1994. Hovhannisyan stated that according to available data, the Surb Hambardzum Church in Berdzor and Kanach Zham (St. John the Baptist) in Shushi have already been completely demolished, along with the villages of Mokhrenes and Khtsaberd in Hadrut, partially Sighnagh in the Askeran region, the village of Mets Takher in Hadrut, and Karin Takh in Shushi. Speaking about his native settlement of Karin Takh, he noted that only the church remains there, as it is part of a 2022 European Court of Human Rights case, along with the Surb Khach Church in Hadrut. 

The Chairman of the Diocesan Council of the Artsakh Diocese of the AAC also pointed out that the process of Islamization of churches is actively happening in Artsakh, with mosques being built. He had prepared programs and decisions to present to the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports, but none of the department's representatives attended the meeting. At the same time, Hovhannisyan noted that meetings were actively held with representatives of the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports in the initial period following the forced expulsion. However, he expressed dissatisfaction with the Armenian Foreign Ministry. According to him, relevant documents had been passed to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs through the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports for transmission to the UNESCO commission through its channels, but to this day there is no information on this matter. According to various sources, these documents, as Hovhannisyan claimed, were never forwarded to UNESCO.