Destruction of Armenian cemetery commemorated
Three years ago this week, an ancient Armenian cemetery in the Azerbaijani enclave of Nakhichevan was destroyed in a stunning act of cultural vandalism. The Djulfa (Jugha in Armenian) cemetery was at one time filled with thousands of beautifully and intricately carved “khachkars” (literally, “cross-stones”), some dating back to the 8th century.
In 1998 and 2002, Azerbaijan bulldozed parts of the cemetery. The last of the gravestones was deliberately demolished by sledgehammer-wielding Azerbaijani soldiers between 10-16 December 2005. The area is now a military shooting range.
The Stiletto blog has a hard-hitting and well-documented post on the tragic commemoration.
For years, Azeris had toppled or vandalized the cemetery’s headstones in retaliation for the six-year Nagorno-Karabakh War that ended in 1994 with 30,000 people dead, a million others displaced and resulted in the creation of an independent republic out of a 1,700 square mile area that Azerbaijan has claimed since the newly-established Soviet Union redrew the borders between Armenia and Azerbaijan in 1921 and put the regions of Nakhichevan and Nagorno-Karabakh on the Azeri side.
According to several accounts – and a real-time videotape by observers on the other side of the Araks river in Iran – in a final paroxysm of violence over the course of a week beginning December 10, 2005 some 100 Azerbaijani soldiers smashed thousands of headstones to bits with sledgehammers, throwing the chunks into the Araks.
To compound the destruction, at a meeting of European culture ministers earlier this month, Azerbaijan implied that the cemetery never existed.
The Djulfa Virtual Memorial and Museum contains a wealth of historical information and documentary evidence, including this five-minute film of the cemetery’s history with footage of the final destruction.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZu2zqFE_gI[/youtube]
The European Court of Human Rights announced a few days ago that it will consider the claim that Azerbaijan is guilty of destroying Armenian khachkars at Djulfa. Azerbaijan has persistently refused to grant official visitors access to the cemetery site.
For more reactions to the commemoration, visit Global Voices Online.
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[...] RELIGION OF.. erasing history: “Destruction of Armenian cemetery commemorated” …. [...]