Baku: Armenia fails to erase Azerbaijanis' historical memory despite destructions PHOTO

The Baku Mugham Centre hosted on July 7 the launch of a new website designed to show the world the current state of historical and cultural monuments in Azerbaijani territories liberated from long-term Armenian occupation.

The newly-launched website heritage.gov.az was created by the State Service for the Protection, Development and Restoration of Cultural Heritage under the Azerbaijani Culture Ministry, Caliber.Az reports.

The website's purpose is to widely publicise the facts of vandalism, appropriation, and destruction committed by Armenia against samples of Azerbaijan's cultural and historical heritage during the occupation and to inform the world community about Armenians' illegal actions.

Speaking at the event, Culture Minister Anar Karimov said that the Azerbaijani people and the state are very sensitive to their cultural and historical heritage.

"For almost 30 years, Armenians have vandalised Azerbaijan's occupied territories, committed cultural genocide, and destroyed almost everything. This was a continuation of the policy initiated in the early 20th century to destroy the Azerbaijani cultural and historical heritage in Iravan and Zangazur, the main purpose of which is to destroy all traces of the historical residence of Azerbaijanis on these lands. Armenia has destroyed almost all of our monuments in an area the size of Lebanon but has not been able to erase the historical memory of Azerbaijanis.

After Azerbaijan's great victory in the Patriotic War in the autumn of 2020, we saw a terrible picture of destruction on the liberated lands. A lot of work was done on monitoring and inventorying cultural and historical monuments on liberated lands in accordance with the instructions of the head of state, and new monuments were identified. A catalogue of similar monuments in Shusha has been prepared, with 210 monuments marked, 114 of which are directly in Shusha; similar catalogues are being prepared for other liberated territories.

The website heritage.gov.az contains detailed information about historical and cultural monuments located in liberated cities and districts. It can be successfully used by both ordinary citizens and scientists and researchers. There is information about the past, the current state of the monuments, and how they look after restoration (those who have already been reconstructed). Of the 706 historical and cultural monuments located in the liberated territories and included in the state register, 240 are republican, and 11 are of global importance, including the Azikh [Azykh] Cave, Khudafarin Bridge, Khudavang Monastery, etc. The new website will make it possible to convey the truth about Azerbaijan to the world even more effectively," Karimov stressed.

In turn, the head of the State Service for the Protection, Development and Restoration of Cultural Heritage Azad Jafarli described the website as an important information resource.

"It reflects the results of monitoring of historical and cultural monuments held on the liberated territories. Their photos and video images before, after the occupation and after the restoration, archival photos, diagrams and so on are posted. The site, which is already working, will become an important information resource on this issue. We urge citizens to send us their historical photos of cultural monuments in the liberated territories to supplement the information on the website," Jafarli stressed.