Azerbaijan can eliminate all signs of the presence of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh. UN rapporteur

The Embassy of Armenia in Switzerland, which is also the permanent representation at the UN office in Geneva, has published the message of the UN special rapporteur on cultural rights issues about the state of cultural and religious significant places in Nagorno Karabakh (Artsakh-ed.), reports "1lurer.am". h.

In a message to Azerbaijan, the UN special rapporteur on cultural rights expressed concern over "the ongoing destruction and appropriation of significant Armenian historical, cultural and religious places and objects, the organized reinterpretation of the history of Nagorno Karabakh in order to erase the traces of the presence of Armenians, as well as discrimination against Armenians in the region and regarding the pressures carried out in violation of the international standards of human rights and international humanitarian law.

"I am particularly worried about the claims that combined attacks on people, monuments and symbols, falsification of history, deletion of place names and negative talk about Armenians can turn into cultural cleansing," said the UN rapporteur.

He emphasized that the International Court of Justice, the European Parliament and the Council of Europe expressed concern about the ideology developing in Azerbaijan, which tries to present the Armenian cultural heritage as the heritage of "Caucasian Albanians", as well as about the revisionist tendency to deny the Armenian heritage.

"The vast majority of art, architecture, and archeology experts in the region have rejected the revisionist claims as false," the reporter's message said. He emphasized that "since December 12, 2022, the Lachin (Berdzori-ed.) corridor connecting Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia has been blocked, violating the obligations undertaken by Azerbaijan in the trilateral cease-fire declaration of November 9, 2020 (paragraph 6). As a result of road closures, 120,000 people were isolated and deprived of various goods and services, which created a humanitarian crisis and had devastating consequences on many human rights. Thus, the crisis will be a direct manifestation of Azerbaijan's discriminatory approach towards Armenians. As soon as the region is cleansed of ethnic Armenians, it will be confirmed that Azerbaijan plans to eliminate all physical signs of the presence of Armenians in the future," the UN special rapporteur concluded.