Armenia has again called for a UNESCO fact-finding mission to visit the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone to protect Armenian cultural and religious sites now under Azerbaijani control following the 2020 war.

The Armenian Foreign Ministry today issued the following statement, stressing there is an urgent need for such a mission given recent reports that Azerbaijan has formed a working group to “study the veracity” of Christian sites in the region.

“The need for an immediate UNESCO fact-finding mission arose to protect the Armenian cultural and religious heritage from imminent threat of extinction in the post-war territories under Azerbaijani control. The cases of vandalism against Armenian monuments, as well as the announcement of the establishment of a working group by the Ministry of Culture of Azerbaijan to distort the identity of the Armenian historical and cultural heritage, prove that such a danger is more than real.”

On February 3, Azerbaijani Minister of Culture Anar Karimov announced that a working group has been established to “remove the fictitious traces written by Armenians on Albanian religious temples.”

The news raised concerns in Armenia and internationally. Armenia publicly condemned Karimov’s February 3 statement.

Responding to the criticism, Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Culture, in a February 7 statement, said “Azerbaijan has always been respectful of its historical and cultural heritage, regardless of religious and ethnic origin.”

The ministry wrote that all historical and religious monuments in the “liberated territories” constitute a part of the overall Azerbaijani heritage and must be protected.

“When it comes to the ancient Albanian heritage in the liberated Azerbaijani territories, it should be noted that a working group has been set up to study this heritage. The working group, comprised of both local and international experts, will monitor and study this Christian heritage, subject to the security conditions on the ground. Should any falsifications be identified, they will be documented with the participation of international experts and presented to the international community. We would also like to recall that any alterations on the historical and cultural heritage, as well as altering their origin runs in contradiction with the provisions of the 1954 Hague Convention,” the February 7 Azerbaijani Minstry of Culture statement reads.

Photo: Armenian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Vahan Hunanyan