Azerbaijan's multicultural environment - model for all countries Albano-Udi community leader says

Robert Mobili, chairman of the Albano-Udi religious community, has said that Azerbaijan's multicultural environment is a model for all countries.

He made the remarks while commenting on US Department of State’s inclusion of a number of countries, including Azerbaijan, on a "watch list" in connection with religious freedom.

"The environment of multiculturalism in Azerbaijan is a model for all countries. This environment in Azerbaijan has been formed for centuries. Representatives of all religious confessions live in friendship. This is tolerance, a value that unites us at all times. The countries of the world also see that there is no religious or national discrimination in Azerbaijan. Regardless of whether our monuments are Christian or other, all of them are protected and restored. This has become possible thanks to President Ilham Aliyev," he told Trend.

The community chairman mentioned that a few months ago he visited the US State Department as part of a delegation.

"We raised this issue there, and during my speech I suggested visiting our country. Having visited Azerbaijan, they saw its realities with their own eyes. The reintroduction of this issue in this form has become relevant again after Armenia's defeat in the war. Armenians want them to be the owners of cultural heritage related to Christianity in our liberated lands. In this way they want to create problems for our future generations.

Their main goal is to claim in the future that the Christian and Albanian cultural heritage churches, temples in the liberated lands belong to them. The Armenian Diaspora is behind this topic, which is being discussed in the United States. The main goal of Armenians is to appropriate the monuments of Christianity before the conclusion of a peace treaty with Azerbaijan," emphasized the chairman of the community.

According to Mobili, already in the first days of the Second Karabakh War (2020), former separatist leader Arayik Harutyunyan tried to give this war a religious coloring, but he failed.

"We liberated both our lands and our cultural and religious heritage. The pro-Armenian countries are interested in making the peace treaty depend on them. Today, the successor of Caucasian Albania is Azerbaijan.

And the heirs of the Albanian religious community are the Udins," he added.