German pastor fears “cultural genocide” Armenia

In early February, the Azerbaijani government announced the establishment of a working group to remove “fictitious” historical traces of Armenians from religious sites in the conquered areas of Nagorno-Karabakh, which Christian Armenians mainly inhabit.

According to international law, it belongs to Muslim Azerbaijan but has been controlled by Armenia since 1994. Since the end of the conflict in November 2020, most of the area has been under the Azerbaijani administration again.

According to the German pastor Peter Fuchs, the announcement of the Azerbaijani government reminded Armenians of 2005, when every reference to the Armenian culture was destroyed in the Nakhichevan exclave. “The world looked the other way when thousands of “ancient Christian cultural monuments” were destroyed”, Fuchs says to the Christian German press agency IDEA.

Cultural genocide

According to Fuchs, the destruction could “justifiably be described as a cultural genocide that accompanies and reflects the actual genocide of Armenian Christians that has been carried out since the founding of the state of Azerbaijan.”

According to Fuchs, Armenian civilians were systematically kidnapped or executed during the armed conflict with Azerbaijan. There are practically no Armenians left in the territories conquered by Azerbaijan in 2020. “It seems that Armenian cultural monuments will now meet the same fate.”

Fuchs thinks that the current crisis in Eastern Europe is an opportunity for the government of Azerbaijan to recall its strategic importance in securing gas supplies should Russia fail as a supplier. “However, the West should not subordinate the fate of the Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh and their culture to their own economic and geopolitical interests.”