Historic Armenian church destroyed in Karabakh

A historic Armenian church in the Karabakh region was destroyed, in violation of a recent ruling by the International Court of Justice, the Cornell Chronicle said citing Caucasus Heritage Watch (CHW).

CHW, who documented the destruction of Armenian cultural heritage in the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic of Azerbaijan beginning in the late 1990s, warns that the same policy of cultural erasure now threatens Armenian monuments in the Karabakh region.

St. Sargis church in the village of Mokhrenes, destroyed between March and July 2022, is one of hundreds of Armenian monuments in territories ceded to Azerbaijan under the terms of a ceasefire that was declared to end the 2020 war between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

The destruction of St. Sargis church marks the first major violation of a ruling by the International Court of Justice, which ordered Azerbaijan in December 2021 to prevent such acts, Cornell Chronicle said.

According to CHW’s report on Nakhchivan, of the 110 medieval and early modern Armenian monasteries, churches and cemeteries that CHW identified from archival sources, 108 were destroyed between 1997 and 2011 in what the authors describe as “a systematic, state-sponsored program of cultural erasure.”

The Cornell Chronicle is Cornell University’s source of official news since 1969, and is part of University Relations.

Photo credit: H. Petrosyan, Monument Watch