(MENAFN- AzerNews)
By Sabina Mammadli
On November 10, 2020, Armenia accepted its defeat in the
44-day-long second Karabakh war and signed a trilateral statement
initiated by the Kremlin, Azernews reports.
The trilateral deal heralded a new era, that is, the occupation
of the Azerbaijani lands that lasted nearly 30 years ended under
the crucial strikes of the Azerbaijani national army, and the
occupied lands came under the control of the real owner.
However, as the Azerbaijani army restored control and mounted
the national flag in the liberated lands, another bitter truth came
to light, that is, the outcome of the scorched earth policy of the
Armenian occupation razed to the ground everything created by men
throughout the history of existence on these lands.
Before the signing of the historic deal, dubbed the act of
capitulation, the Azerbaijani army had liberated around 300
villages, settlements, towns, and historic Shusha city - the pearl
of Karabakh.
During the 30 years of bloody occupation, Armenia destroyed and
vandalized the Azerbaijani territories, leaving once prosperous,
rich lands razed to the ground and littered with mines planted to
kill innocent people and deter their return to homes after 30-year
long hiatus.
The scale of destruction and massacres on Azerbaijan's formerly
occupied territories is shocking, implying deep hatred and
animosity toward the Azerbaijani people, with many experts
describing these mass destructions and killings as genocide.
The country's war-torn Aghdam region alone is seen as a stark
example of Armenian hatred and enmity. Aghdam, known as the
'Hiroshima of the Caucasus' shocks and traumatize visitors, who
arrive at this scene to see with their own eyes infamous scenes of
ruin and destruction.
UNESCO
Throughout the 30-year-long occupation and in the post-war
period, Azerbaijan has repeatedly appealed to international
organizations to dispatch fact-finding missions to register war
crimes on the scenes. Among international organizations, designed
and financed by its members, to deal with and react to the
destruction of monuments of culture is UNESCO. Azerbaijan has
repeatedly invited UNESCO to send its mission to Azerbaijan to
record Armenia's destruction in the territories occupied by Armenia
for decades. Alas, numerous calls went unheard by this
international organization with the mission first of all to react
to the destruction of cultural facilities and monuments.
Furthermore, Azerbaijani NGO leaders also asked UNESCO to send
an expert group to assess the current state of Azerbaijan's
centuries-old cultural and historical heritage but to no avail.
NGOs said that by pursuing a policy of both ethnic and cultural
genocide, Armenia has purposefully erased all traces of
Azerbaijanis, aboriginal inhabitants of these territories, by
plundering, destroying, embezzling, and distorting the Azerbaijani
people's cultural legacy. At the same time, ancient toponyms in
those areas were changed with Armenian ones.
In this regard, on February 4, during a virtual conference,
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, French President Emanuel
Macron, European Council President Charles Michel, and Armenian
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan achieved an agreement on UNESCO
missions to be sent to Azerbaijan and Armenia.
In the Foreign Ministry's statement to UNESCO on February 11,
they stated that a number of precise facts in earlier appeals to
UNESCO have been provided to them. Such as the fact that more than
300 mosques located in Armenia were deliberately destroyed,
appropriated, or used for other purposes in the early 20th century.
It was noted that only the Damirbulagh Mosque functioned as
intended until 1988, but it has now been completely demolished and
replaced by a high-rise building.
U.S. State Department
While some try to toss aside the factual information about
Armenia's three-decade war crimes, the recent U.S. State
Department's report highlighted that hundreds of sites, including
most mosques, shrines, and cemeteries used by the region's ethnic
Azerbaijani communities – approximately 400,000 people – were
looted, vandalized, desecrated, and/or destroyed while under
Armenian occupation.
The information was published in a report on the department's
website, titled“2021 Report on International Religious Freedom”
under the section“Armenia”.
The report noted that the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council
of Europe has condemned the damage and destruction for which
Armenia was responsible in the areas previously controlled by
Armenia-supported separatists, which became again under
Azerbaijan's control.
Under the report, the assembly stated that“the long-running
conflict has had a catastrophic impact on the cultural heritage and
property of the region”.
“The assembly condemned the damage and destruction for which it
said Armenia was responsible in the areas previously controlled by
Armenia-supported separatists, which became again under Azerbaijani
control, and in particular the almost total destruction and looting
of Aghdam, Fuzuli, and other areas over the last 30 years, as well
as the transfer of cultural heritage,” the report said.
It was noted that graves were desecrated; in some instances,
holes were dug out to rob graves, while other sites showed evidence
of the destruction and exhumation by heavy construction
equipment.
'The methodical vandalism of headstones left few individual
graves untouched. Many graves had the carefully hewn faces of the
deceased (carved into gravestones) destroyed by hammers or similar
objects. Additionally, the remains from Azerbaijani graves were
exhumed and gold teeth removed, leaving skulls and bones strewn
across Azerbaijani cemeteries or in some cases completely removed,'
the report stated.
Furthermore, it was stressed that extensive mining of the
territories returned to Azerbaijan made it impossible to access a
vast majority of hundreds of religious sites in towns and villages,
and the extent of any damage to these sites might remain unknown
for years.
The report noted such examples of the damage to significant
religious sites as the 19th-century Haji Alakbar Mosque in Fuzuli
District, which was destroyed, and the Juma Mosque in Aghdam, which
was vandalized with Armenian-language graffiti and whose
mehrab (the niche in the wall that indicates the direction
of Mecca) was riddled with bullet holes.
Moreover, it was stated that western diplomats visiting Martyrs'
Alley reported seeing holes where bodies were once interred and
that only one broken headstone remained in the cemetery. Because
religion and ethnicity are closely linked, it is difficult to
categorize many incidents as being solely based on religious
identity.
'Cemeteries throughout Aghdam were desecrated, looted, and/or
destroyed, including the sacred and historic 18th-century tombs of
Imarat Garvand Cemetery, the city's“Martyrs' Alley,” the report
added.
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