Chauvinism or Racism? You decide.

From an Azerbaijani news agency:

The wipe out of medieval Armenia’s largest cemetery in 2005 by the Azeri authorities has finally brought international attention, at least in media, to the protection of both Armenian and Azeri monuments in the region.

Three articles from this week’s Institute for War & Peace Reporting (IWPR)  issue deal with cultural protection in the South Caucasus – from another Armenian cemetery being erased by the Azeri authorities in Baku (that I wrote about in early June of this year); two mosques in Shushi being restored by Armenians to show off they are far from Azerbaijan’s official policy of cultural genocide, and a more realistic situation of Azeri graves neglected in Armenia.

One needs to applaud Azerbaijani-Armenian conflict expert Tom de Waal –  an IWPR editor – for his equal concern for Armenian and Azeri monuments.

Although rarely mentioned in these days, the unbelievable destruction of Djulfa has, perhaps, shook off people that cultural heritage protection is not a pr issue but a real concern.

The academic community seems to share the view. The world’s premier, and probably the oldest, history magazine, is interested in documenting cultural destruction. In its upcoming November issue, History Today will feature an article on the Djulfa destruction by this author.

In its second report (since the Djulfa destruction) on religous freedom in Azerbaijan, the U.S. State Department has failed again to mention the wipe out of the world’s largest Armenian Christian cemetery by the Azeri authorities in December of 2005.

Released on September 14, 2007, the International Religious Freedom Report on Azerbaijan is a copy-past of at least 6-year-old reports in regards to the condition of Armenian churches in Azerbaijan stating that “all Armenian churches, many of which were damaged in ethnic riots that took place more than a decade ago, remained closed.”

Even outside the Azeri exclave of Nakhichevan, where the Djulfa cemetery existed, the statement did not reflect actuality. A church in central Azerbaijan’s Nizh village, for instance, was reopened in early 2006 for the Udi Christian minority after a publicized restoration eliminated the Armenian letters on church walls and nearby tombstones.

What’s the purpose of the report?

The report is available at http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2007/90164.htm.

Over a year and a half after Azerbaijan smashed to dust the largest medieval Armenian cemetery in the world (see “Djulfa” at the top of this blog), the Azeri authorities are preventing again European observers from visiting the site where the cemetery existed.

Whereas in April of 2006 Azerbaijan banned European observers from entering Djulfa with the pretext that accepting any possibilty of the “Armenian claim” that Djulfa is gone and, therefore, giving any credibility to anything that any Armenian says is the biggest crime any human being could make, now Azerbaijan has figured out the stupidest of all methods to prevent the delegation from monitoring cultural properties. It is saying that Europeans must enter Nagorno Karabakh from Azerbaijan otherwise they will not agree to the visit:

ARMENIAN DISAGREES PACE RAPPORTEUR EDWARD O’HARA’S VISITING NAGORNO KARABAKH VIA AZERBAIJAN, THE VISIT WAS PUT OFF AGAIN

Azeri Press Agency
Aug 31 2007
Azerbaijan

The PACE Rapporteur for Cultural Heritage in the South Caucasus,
British MP, Edward O’Hara’s fact-finding travel to Azerbaijan,
Georgia and Armenia from August 28 through September 6 has been
postponed again, Milli Majlis press service told APA.

The statement reads that Azerbaijan has always supported this
initiative of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe,
and PACE Rapporteur Edward O’Hara’s fact-finding visit to the region,
including Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic of Azerbaijan, Nagorno
Karabakh and the other territories occupied by Armenia.

Azerbaijan objected to Armenian side’s demand at PACE during
preparation for the visit that the fact-finding mission should travel
to Nagorno Karabakh through Armenia (by car from Yerevan).

Related to this issue, Samad Seyidov, head of Azerbaijani parliament
delegation to the PACE, informed the Secretary General Mateo Sorinas
of Azerbaijan’s official stance, underscoring recognition of the
country’s territorial integrity and sovereignty by the international
community and international organizations like UN, OSCE, NATO, CE etc.

Azerbaijan clearly announced its position that both domestic and
international missions and delegations have to seek permission of
official Baku to travel to its territory of Nagorno Karabakh and
other adjacent regions under occupation, and Azerbaijan will not
change its firm position in any condition.

As a result, PACE didn’t support Armenia’s unconstructive and baseless
stance and postponed the visit.

Now, how technically possible it is for European observers to visit Nagorno Karabakh from Azerbaijan is only for the pious Azerbaijani officials to figure out. What is Azerbaijan’s response to the fact that its own Ambassador to Russia visit Nagorno Karabakh, and logically through Armenia, in June of this year?

Of course the one and only logic behind any of the illogical Azerbaijani attempts to stop the monitoring of cultural rights in both Armenia and Azerbaijan is because they know they have smashed Djulfa to dust and can’t cover it up. For one reason they know there are satellite images, that are as objective as anything else can get in the world, that show the cemetery before the destruction. For another reason, they can’t admit that they committed an act of cultural vandalism, or cultural genocide, against a people they consider the creators of all evil on Earth. And most badly, they have lied so many times on the destruction of Djulfa that accepting they lied would undermine their very authority.

Anyhow, although I have been in touch with Mr. O’Hara (the head of the delegation who was supposed to visit and of course never will) and although he doesn’t sound interested in the faith (well, I guest in the past a lot) of Djulfa, I still believe it is to much extent the fault of Armenians that the world doesn’t know about the silenced story of Djulfa.

Well, I should go back to my homework. That’s the best I can do for Djulfa at this minute. But of course there is a reason I have not been really active on the blog recently. So yeah, Azerbaijan, I don’t know about the rest of my kin, but I have not forgotten Djulfa and never will.

This week’s Reporter (June 30, 2007) has my newest article on the destruction of Djulfa cemetery that I just wrote for them using much information from my last semester’s research.

You can download the PDF version of current issue’s Section A – where my piece is – from here.

Here is the article in full:

International Reaction to Djulfa cemetery destruction has been only words and no action

by Simon Maghakyan

June 30, 2007

DENVER, CO. – After several failures to visit Djulfa (Jugha), where the largest medieval Armenian cemetery was reduced to dust by Azerbaijan’s military a year and a half ago, officials at international organizations are talking again about sending experts to the region.

      While reports about plans to send a mission by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to Armenia and Azerbaijan have again appeared in the media, words are all that have reached so far the remote shores of the Araxes where an archeological monument with thousands of ancient Armenian burial stones, khachkars, existed not too long ago.

      Still a UNESCO spokesperson says their talks are serious and, according to Armenpress, the organization is now working out the details of a visit both to Nakhichevan – where Djulfa is located – and Karabakh, where Azerbaijan alleges Armenians have destroyed Azeri monuments.

      And this week, the Armenian Foreign Ministry spokesman Vladimir Karapetian said that UNESCO has already determined the make-up of its monitoring group and that currently the issue is with the visits’ timing.

      Armenians and others have long urged UNESCO to interfere in the destruction of the Djulfa cemetery and other Armenian monuments.

      In October 2006, an international group of parliamentarians from Canada, France, Greece, the United Kingdom, Russia and Switzerland traveled to UNESCO’s Paris headquarters in order to request that Director-General Koїchiro Matsuura take up an investigation in Djulfa.

      Canadian Parliamentarian Jim Karygiannis, a member of the delegation to Paris, this week told this author that he still has not heard back from UNESCO.

***

      In addition to UNESCO, the Council of Europe Secretary General Terry Davis has expressed interest in sending experts to monitor cultural sites whenever a relevant agreement with Armenia and Azerbaijan is reached.

      But efforts by the European Parliament to send a delegation to Djulfa, headed by British MP Edward O’Hara, first in 2006 and again in April 2007 have been unsuccessful. This was despite the February 16, 2006 European Parliament resolution condemning the destruction of Djulfa and calling on Azerbaijan to allow “a European parliament delegation to visit the archaeological site of Djulfa.”

      O’Hara told this author that no party but himself is to blame for this year’s postponement which was “entirely due to domestic commitments.” This explanation is different from last year’s cancellation, which as The Art Newspaper (London) reported in June 2006, was due to Azerbaijan’s refusal to allow ten delegates to enter its territory.

      Meantime, there has been no reaction towards claims by Azeri officials and nationalist historians that the cemetery did not exist or was not Armenian. Foreign diplomats and organizations with presence in Baku have also been quiet toward Azerbaijan’s anti-Armenian activities. Former Norwegian Ambassador Steinar Gil, who publicized a case of vandalism at an Armenian church in central Azerbaijan, remains the only exception.

      Thomas de Waal, an expert on Armenian-Azerbaijani relations says that “foreign investors and diplomats in Azerbaijan are very sensitive towards anything that touches on the Armenian-Azerbaijani issue and the peace process and are therefore very timid about raising the issue of the destruction of cultural monuments.”

***

      Azerbaijan’s continuing military build-up and threats to launch a new war to win control over Nagorno Karabakh add on to the concern for the peace process. But Human Rights Watch has also blamed the West, especially the United States, for trading human rights for oil in Azerbaijan for inaction to condemn broad range of human rights violations.

      The U.S. State Department did not react on the Djulfa vandalism until pressed for comment. Following a congressional hearing on February 16, 2006, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sent a written response to Rep. Grace Napolitano (D-Calif.) acknowledging U.S. awareness of “allegations of desecration of cultural monuments” and urged Azerbaijan to “take appropriate measures to prevent any desecration of cultural monuments.” She also said the U.S. has “encouraged Armenia and Azerbaijan to work with UNESCO to investigate the incident.”

      During a visit to Armenia in March 2006, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matt Bryza called the destruction a “tragedy.” He said: “it’s awful what happened in Djulfa. But the United States cannot take steps to stop it as it is happening on foreign soil. We continually raise this issue at meetings with Azeri officials. We are hopeful that the guilty will justly be punished.”

      Later that month, Bryza’s State Department manager, Assistant Secretary Dan Fried, told the Armenian Assembly of America conference in Washington that he “would be happy to raise issues of Armenian historical sites” with Azerbaijani officials because respect and protection for cultural sites is “a universal policy of the United States.”

      And in her May 12, 2006 response to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), U.S. Ambassador-designate to Azerbaijan Anne Derse noted that the U.S. is “urging the relevant Azerbaijani authorities to investigate the allegations of desecration of cultural monuments in Nakhichevan. If I am confirmed, and if such issues arise during my tenure, I will communicate our concerns to the Government of Azerbaijan and pursue appropriate activities in support of U.S. interests.”

***

      The destruction of Djulfa, nonetheless, did not make it into the State Department’s 2006 International Religious Freedom Report on Azerbaijan released on September 15, 2006. The report only repeated the previous years’ language that “all Armenian churches, many of which were damaged in ethnic riots that took place more than a decade ago, remained closed.”

      Likewise, the report failed to notice the words of the Norwegian Ambassador that a church in the village of Nizh was in early 2006 “restored” with Armenian lettering eliminated from its walls and nearby tombstones. That “restoration” was part of the Azerbaijan’s effort to present the Armenian cultural heritage on its territory as “Albanian” – that is belonging to a culture that became extinct hundreds of years ago – and therefore not Armenian.

***

      The most detailed outsider’s account of Nakhichevan’s Armenian heritage remains that of Steven Sim, a Scottish architect who visited the area in the summer of 2005. During his visit he found no trace of a single medieval Armenian church he had travelled to research, with local interlocutors denying there were any churches there in the first place.

      Still, while traveling along the border with Iran, Sim did manage to see the Djulfa khachkars from his train before the hand-crafted stones were erased from the face of the Earth in less than half a year.

      More than 350 years ago before Sim’s visit, a foreign traveller to Djulfa had estimated 10,000 khachkars in the cemetery. By 1998, less than seven decades after a Soviet agreement with Turkey placed Nakhichevan under Azerbaijan, there were only 2,000 khachkars remaining while the entire Armenian population had disappeared.

      According to eyewitness reports cited by the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), Azeri authorities made efforts to destroy much of the Djulfa cemetery in 1998 and again in 2002. Describing what he saw in Djulfa in August 2005, Sim reported “what I saw was real savageness, but I cannot say that they did not leave anything, since there are still lying khachkars.”

      Four months later, on December 15, 2005, Russia’s Regnum News Agency was the first international outlet to quote reports of approximately “100 Azerbaijani servicemen penetrate[ing] the Armenian cemetery near Nakhichevan… using sledgehammers and other tools… to crush Armenian graves and crosses.”

      This final stage of destruction, which also amounted to desecration of Armenian remains underneath the burial monuments, had reportedly started on December 14 and lasted for three days, leaving no trace of a single khachkar.

      An Armenian film crew in northern Iran, from where the cemetery was visible, had videotaped dozens of men in uniform hacking away at the khachkars with sledgehammers, using a crane to remove some of the largest stones from the ground, breaking the stones into small pieces, and dumping them into the River Araxes using a heavy truck.

      Nevertheless, Azeri president Ilham Aliyev told the Associated Press that the reports of the destruction are “an absolute lie, slanderous information, a provocation.”

      By March 2006, photographs of the cemetery site showed that it had been turned into an army shooting range. An Azerbaijani journalist who visited the area on behalf of the London-based Institute for War and Peace Reporting in April 2006 similarly found no traces of the cemetery left.

Amnesty International has finally taken note of discriminatory treatment of Azeri refugees from Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh by the Azerbaijani government.

In a press release and a study released today, Amnesty International summarizes the state of Azeri refugees as followed:

• Internally displaced people are restricted by the internal residence registration system to a fixed address in order to receive aid and social services, despite the de jure abolition of this system in the Azerbaijani Constitution. Residence permits in prosperous urban centres are difficult to obtain without the payment of bribes.
• New settlements for the internally displaced have been constructed in geographically remote, economically unviable and otherwise unsuitable locations, leading to isolation and segregation.
• The internally displaced have not been consulted on decision-making processes with direct impact on their lives, for example, the location of new settlements built to house them.
• The internally displaced are consistently encouraged to see their situation as temporary, discouraging them to seek integration or permanent resettlement in another part of the country.

Interestingly, Armenia has long accused Azerbaijan for deliberating worsening the lives of Azeri refugees in order to receive international support and sympathy in the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh.

An Azeri refugee is quoted by Amnesty International as saying, “We are ready to live with the Armenians of Karabakh and we have not forgotten our historical home there. But we won’t see peace for at least ten years, that’s why we want decent living conditions now.”

Artsakh, the unrecognized Armenian Republic of Nagorno Karabakh and de jure part of Azerbaijan, is more free than Azerbaijan.  The newly released 2007 Freedom House report says the Armenian enclave is partly free while Azerbaijan is not free.

The Republic of Armenia has also been rated as partly free. Particular attention is paid to the troubling state of women and human trafficking in Armenia:  

Domestic violence and trafficking in women and girls for the purpose of prostitution are believed to be serious problems. Representation of women in the current Parliament is low: at year’s end, only 7 out of 131 seats in the National Assembly were held by women. According to the election code, women shall now comprise 15 percent of a party’s list for the proportional election and hold every tenth position on party lists, marking an improvement from the 2003 parliamentary elections.

The Freedom House report failes to take a note of the growing institutionalized anti-Armenianism in Azerbaijan such as the government sponsored destruction of Armenian monuments.

Two things you don’t want to be in Azerbaijan are a journalist or an Armenian.  While I am still trying to find out why the government hates independent journalists so much, I may be closer to finding out where there is so much hate for Armenians. THE TEXTBOOKS, of course!

From MehrNews via WikiPedia

A 5th grade history book from Azerbaijan entitled “Fatherland” shows most of northern Iran and significant portions of Armenia (including all of Lake Sevan) and Georgia (Kvemo Kartli and southern Kakheti) under Azerbaijani control.

Armenia’s tiny Jewish community is “deeply irritated,” in the words of its leadership, with an interview in the Azerbaijani media where the Chief Rabbi of Azerbaijan’s European Jews is quoted as accusing Armenia of intolerance and praising Azerbaijan for tolerance toward its minorities.

 Photo: Azerbaijan’s Chief Rabbi who says “Azerbaijan’s propaganda by an ethnic or religious minority leader [from Azerbaijan]  is taken with large trust in the world”

The letter, co-signed by Rimma Feller Varzhapetyan (Head of Armenia’s Jewish Community), Rabbi Gershon Meir Burshtein (Chief Rabbi of Armenia), and Villy Veiner (President of Menora Cultural Center) and published in full by PanArmenian, ridicules Azerbaijan’s Chief Rabbi Meir Bruk.  Indeed the Azerbaijani Rabbi is very interesting.  He is quoted as saying in the anti-Armenian newspaper that “Azerbaijan’s propaganda by an ethnic or religious minority leader [from Azerbaijan]  is taken with large trust in the world” (“Пропаганда Азербайджана представителем этнической группы или духовного лидера пользуется большим доверием в мире“) crediting his own campaign about tolerance in Azerbaijan.

Rabbi Bruk said in his interview to Azerbaijan’s Russian language Zerkalo newspaper on June 12, 2007 that “Armenia is weak spiritually and economically.”  Not surprised with seeing regular anti-Armenian “dirt” in the Azerbaijani media, Armenia’s Jewish leaders say they still cannot remain silent on the “well-paid order” their kin is obeying.

Armenia’s Jewish leadership calls “illiterate” Azerbaijani young Rabbi’s data that there are only 200 Jews left in Armenia because of the intolerance in the country.  There “are officially registered four Jewish public, religious and cultural organizations in the republic,” they write, “which are recognized by all world Jewish organizations. Here we have a working synagogue headed by the Chief Rabbi of Armenia.”

Although there is some extent of anti-Semitism in Armenia, the outcry of Armenian Jews is especially reasoned due to the outrageous intolerance of not only anything Armenian (remember the wipe out of the medieval Armenian cemetery in 2005), but the recent imprisonment and persecution of independent Azeri journalists, for example, across Azerbaijan.

The desecration of Jewish graves in Azerbaijan is of course not government sponsored.  So compared to how the Armenian culture has been wiped out in Azerbaijan by the state, yes, Jews live in a country of extreme tolerance.  They are just a bit scared to wear the star of David in Azerbaijan says the New York Times and their leaders need to do a bit of, in the words of Rabbi Burk himself, “propaganda” to fit in the anti-Armenian society. 

Here is more from the letter by Armenia’s Jewish leadership:

Doesn’t Mr. Bruk know the opinion of the European Parliament on countless violations of democratic bases and human rights committed by Azerbaijan, the continuing political and judicial prosecutions of any kind of dissent?

And of course God forbid Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh from goods that Mr. Bruk promises them in case if Armenia returns Nagorno Karabakh to Azerbaijan. Nobody here has forgotten Sumgait, Kirovabad, Baku, and Karabakh. People in other countries, including Israel too remember those “goods”.

We think that the wise Rabbi has forgotten that his and our mission is in peacekeeping and helping our countries to settle the accumulated problems on the level of popular diplomacy, and not in compressing the complex relations between the two neighbors, which are intense and without it. Our mission is not to become marionettes in the hands of certain political and financial bosses.

At the end we’d like to draw the attention of the whole European community, public and religions International Jewish Organizations that Jews of Armenia are deeply irritated at the above-mentioned article. We think that similar statements made by an official religions leader, Mr. Bruk, are of quite provocative character, they promote ethnic discord and are contrary to the tolerance policy declared by those organizations. We hope that actions of Mr. Bruk will receive adequate evaluation and condemnation.

Vandalized graves; broken stones.  Another Christian cemetery has been erased in the Republic of Azerbaijan this time containing not only Armenian, but also Russian, Georgian and Ukrainian graves.

Photo: The burial monument of Tamara Akhoomiants, an ethnic Armenian, vandalized

According to photographs and information posted at Dpni.org, a conservative website from Russia, “Recently im Baku – the capital of Azerbaijan – an old Christian cemetery was destroyed. Hundreds of graves of Russians, Armenians, Georgians, and Ukrainians were barbarically demolished by bulldozers. ”

Photo: Dead residents of a Christian cemetery being “evicted” from Azerbaijan (again)

Shockingly enough, the photographs of the now-gone cemetery were taken in December of 2005 – the same month when the medieval Armenian cemetery of Djulfa was reduced to dust by the Azerbaijani army. 

According to the website, the cemetery is being replaced with elite houses.