Azerbaijan erases Armenian heritage in Nagorno-Karabakh, report warns

The European Center for Law and Justice (ECLJ) warned of Azerbaijan’s systematic erasure of Armenian Christian heritage in Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) in a report released on Thursday, Le Figaro said.

“The thousand-year-old Armenian heritage of Nagorno-Karabakh is threated. It’s not just the fear of the 100,000 Armenians who fled their homeland in September 2023 after Azerbaijan’s military operation, but the findings of the European Center for Law and Justice,” the French newspaper reported.

The ECLJ report documents the “cultural erasure” carried out by Baku in Nagorno-Karabakh, including its destruction of churches and vandalism of cemeteries.

This “brazen and devastating policy (…) combines destruction and revisionism to erase the Armenian heritage of Nagorno-Karabakh,” warns the Strasbourg-based organization.

“Inhabited almost continuously by Armenians since antiquity and disputed between Armenia and Azerbaijan since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Nagorno-Karabakh boasts of around 500 cultural sites holding roughly 6,000 relics of Armenian heritage,” the report added.