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. <This suggests that there is a political directive  not to participate in the discussions initiated by the opposition>,  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 <added> 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.  <One gets the feeling that the right hand does  not know what the left hand is doing. We can work with the Ministry  of Education, Science, Culture and Sports, but when the issue is  transferred to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the outcome is  unknown," the head of the Council of the Artsakh Diocese of the AAC  complained.