An Armenian expert on monuments has commended the recent speech by the country’s leader at a leading European think tank in which he raised the issue of Armenian cultural heritage in Azerbaijan.

Speaking at the Chatham House British Royal Institute of International Affairs in London last week Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan talked about the destruction of Armenian cultural heritage in Azerbaijan-controlled Nakhijevan in the context of Karabakh, making the case for the currently de-facto independent Armenian republic’s independence from Baku.

“Azerbaijan has exhausted the resources of trust in terms of autonomous status for minorities within its boundaries,” he said in his speech in London last Wednesday. “There was once another Armenian autonomy in Azerbaijan: Nakhijevan. What happened to it? Not a single Armenian is left in Nakhijevan. Can such guarantees be taken for granted? You might say Azerbaijan was different then, and is different now. During the last 18 years of that “difference” more Armenian and Christian monuments were destroyed than in the preceding 70 years. The international organizations tasked with protection of the cultural heritage were unable to do anything: Azerbaijan did not even permit them to visit and see the obliterated Armenian monuments.”

One of the latest examples of Azeri vandalism that the Armenian leader referred to in his speech is the destruction of an Armenian cemetery in Jugha in Nakhijevan – 3,500 khachkars (cross-stones) with Armenian inscriptions and original engravings. What remains of the famous cemetery today are pictures and memories.

Monuments expert Samvel Karapetyan, who heads the Yerevan office of the “Research on Armenian Architecture” Organization, says Armenia should use every occasion to raise the issue of Jugha.

The expert says he was happy to hear President Sargsyan raise the problems of the preservation of Armenian cultural heritage outside Armenia and thinks it is important that the country’s statesmen use high tribunes to remind the international community of these issues.

“It is possible to talk to the world in the language of culture, which is above politics, and in this case our country will really gain,” says Karapetyan.

Stepan Safaryan, who heads the opposition Heritage party’s parliamentary faction, tells ArmeniaNow that President Sargsyan’s speech was good, but late, saying that the exodus of Armenians from Nakhijevan would have been the fate of Karabakh and Azerbaijan’s policies in that once Armenian-populated region is the best example to cite.

“That [speech] is now pleasant to the ear, but in reality nothing was done at the time to give an adequate evaluation to that,” says Safaryan, referring to the case of Nakhijevan and Jugha in particular.

The cemetery of Jugha is situated on three hills in the western part of Jugha. A majority of 10,000 khachkars, many of which were dated back to the 15th-16th centuries, were destroyed at the beginning of last century. Their number in the 1970s did not exceed 3,000. According to the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), in 1998 another 800 khachkars were destroyed. Under the pressure of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) the destructions stopped temporarily, only to resume four years later.

“By 2003, the cemetery with a history of 1,500 years had been razed to the ground,” wrote ICOMOS.

In 1998-1999, Iranian-Armenian architects took pictures from the other bank of the river Arax of Azerbaijanis destroying the traces of Armenian culture in the area with bulldozers. The territory was concreted and turned into a military camp.

Karapetyan says: “An area full of culture, if handed over to Azerbaijan, gets stripped of culture.”

Speaking about the saved Christian and pre-Christian monuments in Karabakh, Karapetyan says that today they are values not only for the Armenian people, but for the whole civilized world, because they are cultural values of world significance.