Saturday, April 24 2021 14:58

ArmInfo. Foreign Minister Ara Aivazian made a speech at "Heritage in danger.  Artsakh" exhibition opening ceremony. As the press service of the Armenian Foreign  Ministry informs, the speech reads as follows: 

Honorable Prime Minister, Honorable Speaker of the National Assembly,  Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen!

Let me first express my deep gratitude for your readiness to be here,  to share our grief, and our concerns, and to support us on April  24th, amid the pandemic that has become an unprecedented challenge  for all of humanity.

Today, as we commemorate the victims of the Armenian Genocide, we  should remember that a significant portion of the cultural heritage  created by our ancestors has also become a subject of the cultural  genocide.  The crime of genocide is not only the physical  annihilation of a national or religious group, but also the  destruction of the national culture that is an integral part of its  identity - the Cultural Genocide.

The cultural genocide pursues two main goals? The first is an attempt  to tear the souls of the survivors apart, to subject them to  psychological violence and the second is to erase the historical  traces of the memory of the annihilated indigenous population. In  other words, the cultural genocide targets memory, historical justice  and human dignity.

In 1915, the deliberate, pre-planned massacres and deportations of  the Armenian population in the Ottoman Empire marked the beginning of  the cultural genocide, which lasted for decades. According to the  official report submitted by the Republic of Armenia at the Paris  Conference in 1919, 1860 churches and 229 monasteries had been  destroyed. These were very preliminary and incomplete data, and  during the following years this number only increased, as the  cultural devastation not merely proceeded, but spread to the  territories of the Republic of Armenia occupied by Turkey in 1920,  including in Ani - "the city of a thousand and one churches". The  destroyed cultural heritage includes tens of thousands of medieval  manuscripts, cross-stones (khachkars), secular and other religious  property.

Nowadays, Azerbaijan continued the traditions of Turkey in the  territories forcibly evicted from Armenians. A horrifying example of  Cultural Genocide is the mass destruction of the Armenian monuments  in Nakhijevan, which has no parallel in the history of mankind.   Nakhijevan, which carries biblical legend in its name, in 1997-2006  was subjected to a large-scale cultural massacre organized at the  state level, as a result of which 28 thousand cultural objects were  completely destroyed, 89 of which were medieval churches and about 6  thousand were medieval khachkars. Notably the Azerbaijani authorities  first tried to change the Armenian origin of the monuments, then, not  believing in their own speculations, decided to completely erase the  speechless witnesses of the Armenian identity of Nakhijevan.

In 2020, 105 years after the Armenian Genocide, we once again faced a  disaster planned and carried out by the same logic and methods.   During and as a result of the large-scale war waged by Azerbaijan and  Turkey against Artsakh, a part of the Armenian people appeared in  danger of annihilation, deprivation of their homeland, and its  cultural heritage was on the verge of complete destruction.

Therefore, today it is imperative for us to save the thousands of  cultural, including religious monuments under the Azerbaijani control  in Artsakh, especially since there are already cultural monuments  targeted by the Azerbaijani armed forces, such as the Ghazanchetsots  Cathedral in Shushi and Green Hour (Kanach Zham). The endangered  cultural heritage includes about 1,500 cultural objects: 161  churches, about 600 khachkars, archeological sites, unique examples  of secular architecture - palaces, bridges, about 19 thousand museum  pieces.

Dear ladies and gentlemen, The imperative of saving the spiritual and  material values created by the Armenian people over the millennia has  brought us here. Our cultural heritage is the result of our  ancestors' sentiments, thoughts and devotion.  It has been a part of  our destiny, it has gone through all the stages of our national  formation, historical development and losses. Even today, our  ancestors speak to us through the values they have created; they  bequeathed us their wisdom, their sense of beauty, their human  dignity.

In order to save this cultural heritage, it is necessary to be aware,  to have a clear idea of the essence of the problem, its scope and  consequences.

With this exhibition, we have pursued this very goal - not only to  voice our concerns, the statistics of endangered monuments, but also  to present their faces, believing that the loss of these monuments  will be irreversible for all of us, for the world cultural heritage.

The issue of preservation of cultural heritage in Artsakh is on the  agenda of the Nagorno-Karabakh issue. It is covered by international  mediators, as well as many countries, UN specialized agencies and  organizations. However, the official statements alone are not enough.   It is necessary to unite all efforts to prevent another cultural  genocide. We should not forget that even the most protracted  conflicts are temporary, but the historical-cultural heritage is  eternal''.