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• Protest: Students, church servants in Yerevan demand respect for Armenian cultural heritage in Georgia

Dear Saro I think you are wrong It's comicaly that you write have seen anytime Georgia or Georgians? You don't know anything about Georgia. Really laughable that Georgians are "Muslims" there live many Armeninas frendly with Georgians. there are many Armenian churchs. So our cultures are in close relationship...

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The collapse of a medieval Armenian church in Tbilisi last week led students and representatives of the Armenian Apostolic Church in Yerevan to stage a protest to show their anger towards Georgian authorities and call on them to tend to issues of the preservation of Armenian historical-cultural monuments in Georgia.

Hundreds of students and servants of the Church staged a protest in front of the Georgian embassy in Yerevan on Tuesday afternoon and then delegated representatives to go to the UN office to call international attention to the problems of preserving Armenian cultural heritage in Georgia.

The Armenian St. George Church (Sourb Gevorg Church of Mughni) built in 1356, November 19. St. George Church of Mughni is one of the five disputed churches which have become an issue of controversy between the Armenian Apostolic and the Georgian Orthodox Church. Armenian church officials in Georgia hold Georgian authorities responsible for the collapse of the church. They say Georgian authorities have left unanswered numerous applications from Holy Etchmiadzin and the local Armenian diocese for St. George of Mughni, along with four other churches, to be returned to the Armenian Diocese of Georgia.

(Until the mid-1980s, still in Soviet times, St. George of Mughni served as a museum of folk art. In 1990, it was assessed as accident-prone, not subject to restoration, and was completely shut down. The church then fell into complete decay.)

Participants in the Tuesday protest in Yerevan made demands for the Georgian authorities and Church to grant a legal status to the Georgian-Armenian diocese, return the Armenian churches and respect and preserve the cultural values of the Armenian people in the territory of modern Georgia.

The Georgian ambassador received a delegation of five students who presented their demands to the ambassador in the form of a letter.

After the meeting, chairman of the Student Council at the Teachers’ Training University Volodya Gasparyan told ArmeniaNow that the Georgian ambassador promised to forward the letter to the Georgian authorities and also promised that works on the restoration of the church will start early next year.

Armenian Culture Minister Hasmik Poghosyan, for her part, turned to the Georgian minister of culture, monuments protection and sport, asking him to specify the ministry’s position on the recent development and inform the Armenian side on the measures being taken.

According to the Ministry’s information, the Georgian minister admitted that the church was indeed in a bad condition and said that his ministry had already taken steps regarding its restoration. The Georgian side reportedly said that works on the church’s fortification are already under way and work after that will be implemented by a specialized agency of restoration architects. It is also reported that a restoration architect of the Armenian Ministry of Culture is leaving for Georgia Wednesday to participate in the preliminary work.