The Region in Brief

What Azerbaijan is doing in Artsakh, is exactly the same what the Taliban and ISIS did: Cultural Genocide. The only difference is, that Azerbaijan’s crimes have not caused any outrage internationally and hardly even make news internationally. Worse, the Pashinyan government is shamefully silent on this.

The Azeris have destroyed the vast majority of Armenian heritage in Artsakh, including statues, monuments, government buildings symbolizing Artsakh, churches, monasteries, even cemeteries, apartment blocks and whole villages, since they grabbed all of Artsakh in 2023. They already started destroying every Armenian heritage, when the periphery of Artsakh was awarded to them in 2020.

The only Armenian church and two monasteries, that were not demolished outright, are the Shushi Cathedral and the Gandzasar and Amaras monasteries. These have been expropriated by Azerbaijan as “Caucasian Albanian”, and have been desecrated inside and outside, by changing the appearance of the cathedral and destroying Armenian writings, paintings and khachkars inside and around these buildings. With this act of vandalism, these three desecrated buildings are symbolically as good as destroyed.

Azerbaijan continues with this cultural Armenian Genocide, until no trace of Armenian heritage is left, and has made it clear that Armenians will never be allowed to live and be buried in Artsakh. On top of that, with the vast building projects and new settlements, Artsakh is becoming unrecognizable and alien, in preparation for settling 600,000 Azeris, who are rabidly Armenophobic and would lynch an Armenian on sight.

Can the supporters of the so-called “peace treaty” and of Pashinyan explain, how on earth is peace possible with such a genocidal regime?