“Shushi’s Holy Mother Cathedral is one of the important centers of the Armenian Apostolic Church in Artsakh, and the clergy and followers of the Armenian Church must have unhindered access to that holy site.” This was stated by Vahan Hunanyan, spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Armenia, in a comment published on the occasion of the first anniversary of the double bombing of the Holy Savior Ghazanchetsots Cathedral in Shushi by the armed forces of Azerbaijan.
“On 8 October 2020, during the military attack unleashed against Artsakh and its people, the armed forces of Azerbaijan carried out two precision air strikes on the Holy Savior Ghazanchetsots Cathedral in Shushi, causing significant destruction to it. Days after the 9 November trilateral statement, the same church was subjected to vandalism and desecration. Alongside the physical damage to Shushi’s Holy Mother Cathedral, Azerbaijan does not cease its attempts to distort the Armenian identity of the church, which is carried out through changes to the church’s architectural appearance under the pretext of renovation,” read the statement of the Department of Information and Public Diplomacy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
“The double deliberate shelling of a place of worship is not only a condemnable crime under international law, particularly the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict and its Second Protocol (1999), but also a symbolic revelation of intentions; it is an obvious manifestation of Azerbaijan’s policy aimed at the eradication of any trace of Armenian presence in the territory of Artsakh,” emphasized the spokesperson of Armenia’s foreign policy agency.
Hunanyan also noted that “one year after the attack unleashed by Azerbaijan against Artsakh, the fate of approximately 1,500 historical-cultural heritage and places of worship located in the territories of Artsakh that have come under Azerbaijani control, as well as thousands of museum exhibits, continues to remain uncertain and endangered.”
