Destruction and Disappearance of Armenian Cultural and Religious Heritage
May, 2025
From 2023, through 2024, and continuing in its 2025 Annual Report, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (“IRF”) has specifically identified Azerbaijan and recommended that it be on the United States Department of State’s Special Watch List. The 2025 IRF Report highlighted Azerbaijan’s stated policy and organized destruction of Armenian religious and cultural heritage in Artsakh (also known as Nagorno-Karabakh) and its crackdown on civil society. This has been denounced by the Council of Europe, the United Nations Committee against Torture, the European External Action Service, and the European Parliament. The 2025 IRF Report also discussed the heightened human rights concerns in both houses and both major political parties in the U.S. Congress.1
Caucasus Heritage Watch is a research initiative at Cornell and Purdue Universities that uses satellite imagery to document cultural and religious heritage destruction in Artsakh. With the complete collapse of the Republic of Artsakh and the forced relocation of all Armenians in the region, a population of 120,000, the Armenian cultural and religious heritage sites are at extreme risk of destruction. Caucasus Heritage Watch’s most recent June, 2024 report documented, with satellite imagery, a 75% increase in destroyed Armenian Christian cultural and religious heritage sites including churches, monasteries, cemeteries, khachkars (“stone crosses”), and cultural buildings.2
On January 10, 2025, the International Law Section of the American Bar Association published a report entitled: A Survey of Recently Destroyed and Endangered Armenian Cultural Property in Nagorno-Karabakh.3
In addition to the physical destruction of Armenian cultural and religious sites that are immovable, priceless movable cultural objects in the former museums in Artsakh like the Nikol Duman House-Museum, the Shushi Museum of Fine Arts, the Stepanakert Gallery of Art, and the Tigranakert Archaeological Museum are potentially forever lost. These include the numerous monuments––large and small––left behind in the now-depopulated region. Among the most painful losses is the oldest known khachkar, discovered in Vaghuhas, dating back to 866 CE.4
The false narrative continues online as even the iconic tufa monument of Artsakh, “We are our Mountains” is vulnerable to disappearance and misappropriation under Azeri law and in the current digital environment.5
In addition to the campaign of actual physical destruction of immovable Armenian cultural and religious heritage, disappearance of movable cultural and religious heritage, appropriation through copyright law, there is a campaign to erase Armenian culture and religion in Artsakh by the creation and promotion of a false narrative that Caucasian-Albanians, not Armenians, created this heritage. In April, 2025, in the wake of the 110th Anniversary of the world’s commemoration of the Armenian Genocide and Holocaust Remembrance Day, Azerbaijan held an unsolicited conference which they entitled “Christianity in Azerbaijan: History and Modernity” at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. No internationally recognized scholars were invited or presented at this event. Despite universal recognition that Armenia adopted Christianity as a state religion in 301 AD, and historical confirmation through its churches and monuments that Christian Armenians lived in the region for thousand of years, this conference promoted the false narrative that the Christians in Artsakh were “Caucasian-Albanian,” a group that the current Azerbaijani regime wishes to establish as its ancestors. Within days of learning about the event, over 350 international scholars signed a petition condemning the event. The Armenian Patriarchs in Jerusalem and Etchmiadzin issued outrage stating that the Azerbaijan conference was “a state-sponsored act of revisionism and pseudo-historiography that falls so humiliatingly below the standards of the Vatican that there is no plausible explanation except financial incentive.”
Ongoing Human Rights Violations of Armenian Christians Charged, Detained and on Trial in Azerbaijan
Since Azerbaijan’s forced displacement of 120,000 Armenians in Artsakh in September, 2023, there have been detentions of Armenians involved in the governance of Artsakh by Azerbaijan and these people, most notably 23 of them, viewed as political prisoners, are now being subjected to sham trials in Azerbaijan.
The trial of Ruben Vardanyan in Baku which began in January, 2025 continues in secret, without substantive or procedural due process and in violation of Articles 9 and 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, including: the right to be free from arbitrary arrest or detention, right to be informed of the reason for arrest and be promptly informed of any charges, right to trial within a reasonable time or to be released, right to a fair and public hearing by a competent, independent, and impartial tribunal, right to the presumption of innocence (and right to the presumption of bail), right to be informed promptly and in a language which is understood of the nature and cause of the charge, right to be tried without undue delay, right to legal assistance of own choosing, and right to know about and examine adverse witnesses.6,7
In March, 2025, Azerbaijan continued to flout all ICJ Rulings and UN international laws as its military opened fire on villages within the boundaries of the Republic of Armenia, escalating tensions and spreading fear in the Syunik Provence in southern Armenia. This escalation of hostilities continues to date.
- https://www.uscirf.gov/sites/default/files/2025 03/2025%20USCIRF%20Annual%20Report.pdf
- https://indd.adobe.com/view/b1b54fc0-dce2-4eb0-ba83-eb728c49dd20
- https://www.americanbar.org/groups/international_law/resources/newsletters/survey-recently-destroyed-endangered-armenian-cultural-property/
- https://evnreport.com/spotlight-karabakh/memories-from-the-museums-of-artsakh/
- https://hyperallergic.com/964746/when-copyright-transforms-the-right-to-remember-we-are-our-mountains-artsakh/
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See Azerbaijan: Trump Administration Must Raise Human Rights During High Level Visit, AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL, available at https://www.amnestyusa.org/updates/azerbaijan-trump-bolton-human-rights/; 2022 Country Reports on Human Rights Practice: Azerbaijan, BUREAU OF DEMOCRACY, HUMAN RIGHTS, AND LABOR, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE, Mar. 20, 2023, available at https://www.state.gov/reports/2022-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/azerbaijan/.
- “European Parliament passes resolution on the ‘sham trials of Armenian hostages’ in Azerbaijan” by Xandie Alexandra Kuennig, March 13, 2025, available at https://oc-media.org/european-parliament-passes-resolution-on-the-sham-trials-of-armenian-hostages-in-azerbaijan/
The Systematic Erasure of Armenian Christian Heritage in Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabagh)
February, 2025
In 2023, during the blockade and armed conflict in the 1,220 square miles region formerly known as Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan, 120,000 Christian Armenians were without food, heat and electricity for 9 months; 30,000 children were not able to go to school. By the end of September 2024, there was a mass exodus of Christian Armenians from the region. They were all forced out of their homes, churches and neighborhoods like refugees.
Caucasus Heritage Watch has geolocated and documented with satellite imagery at least 110 out of 127 (98%) Armenian culture heritage sites, including churches, monasteries, schools, and monuments, which have been totally destroyed, damaged, or threatened.
For example, between September 2023 and June 2024, 3 Armenian Churches were completely destroyed: (1) Saint Sargis Church in Mokhrenes (18th century); (2) Saint John the Baptist Church in Shushi (built in 1847); (3) Saint Ascension Church in Berdzor.
Many more Armenian Churches and Monasteries have been visibly and significantly damaged and are now threatened.
Armenian Christian Cemeteries with thousands of beautiful “khatchkars” (Armenian Stone Crosses) have been destroyed or damaged. Each khatchkar was unique and hand carved. Khatchars are listed on UNESCO’s Representative List of Intangible Heritage of Humanity.
Under the guise of “construction” or “renovation”, Azerbaijan is now removing distinctly Armenian Christian domes and defacing stone inscriptions with the Armenian language on them.
Christian Armenians Are Being Illegally Held in Azerbaijan Prisons
Februray, 2025
- At least 23 Christian Armenian men are currently being held hostage in Azerbaijan without any formal charges or due process. Most have had no communication with their families.
- Human Rights Watch and Amnesty international have documented systematic torture of Christian Armenians in Azerbaijan. In one particularly harrowing video from October 2020, Azerbaijani soldiers are seen executing Armenian captives, including civilians.
- Cases filed by Armenian with the European Court of Human Rights and the United Nations International Court of Justice have been stalled.
- On January 16, 2025, via a phone call to his family, one Christian Armenian prisoner, Ruben Vardanyan, the former State Minster of Nagoro-Karabakh and a co-founder of the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative, and a 2024 Nobel Peace Prize nominee, stated that he has been detained for over 470 days, including 340 days of solitary confinement and 23 days of torture and punishment. He was only recently advised that he faces 42 charges which carry sentences up to life imprisonment. He and his lawyer have only been permitted to skim through 422 volumes of files, all written solely in Azerbaijani. He also indicated that has been forced to falsify and sign documents and reiterated his complete innocence. If he is to be tried in Azerbaijan, Vardanyan pleads for due process: adequate time and opportunity to prepare a defense; elimination of all false documents and procedural violations; and a fair and public trial. In his recent statement from an Azerbaijan prison cell, Vardanyan appeals for peace, nonviolence and truth to prevail. His request to have his case consolidated with other Christian Armenians cases was denied by the Azerbaijan court on January 17, 2025. His next hearing with the court is on January 27, 2025.
Report on Artsakh Post-September, 2023
November, 2024
The Threatened Armenian Religious Heritage of Artsakh
January, 2024
On September 19, 2023, after nine months of enforcing a total blockade on the 120,000 indigenous Armenians of Artsakh, Azerbaijan initiated military operations against the enclave which lasted for one day, after which the military checkpoint on the only road into and out of the area was opened and the defenseless population of Armenians was forced to migrate.
Artsakh was ethnically cleansed of Armenians over the course of one week.
Armenians left behind their homes, livelihoods, farms, fruit orchards, animal herds, vineyards, churches, monasteries, cemeteries and other religious and cultural sites. Now, Azerbaijan is busy resettling Artsakh with Azerbaijani citizens, ceding to them the private homes, farms, vineyards and businesses of the forcibly displaced Armenians. As for the collective Armenian cultural and Christian religious heritage that have also been left behind, reports from the Azerbaijani authorities and other observers indicate that the authorities have undertaken a policy bearing the hallmarks of cultural genocide.
“Cultural genocide” is the process by which any and all cultural or religious traces of the group of people exterminated or forced to migrate is destroyed or removed from the land. This process can be accomplished in many ways, among them: outright destruction; erasure (sometimes euphemized as “renovation”) of the distinctive identifying cultural or religious features present in cultural and religious heritage sites; “reclassification,” i.e. misattributing the cultural heritage to another culture; or deliberate undertaking of adjacent construction without enforcement of architectural impact assessments on cultural or religious heritage sites. The targets of the destruction or removal, erasure, reclassification, or neglectful adjacent construction are the very same cultural and religious heritage sites of those who were forced to migrate, including churches, monasteries, and cemeteries.
A precedential example of “cultural genocide” at the hands of Azerbaijan occurred in recent times in Nakhichevan, a region that was emptied of Armenians by the 1990s. From 1997 until 2006, when there were no Armenians living in the exclave, Azerbaijan set out to eliminate all Armenian religious and cultural heritage from the area. The most notable act of destruction was carried out by the Azerbaijani military in Julfa (Jugha), in an Armenian cemetery where they destroyed thousands of khachkars (carved cross-stones) from the Middle Ages. The state-sanctioned policy was implemented and carried out to such an extent that today in Nakhichevan there is no trace of Armenian religious or cultural heritage remaining.
As we begin the year 2024, we have hope that the international community, religious organizations, cultural preservation organizations, governments, and civil society groups, among others, will speak out and condemn Azerbaijan’s actions and, more importantly, take action to protect the endangered Armenian cultural and religious heritage in Artsakh. The world’s voice, conscience, and might must convey that the pursuit of deliberate destruction of Armenian religious and cultural heritage by Azerbaijan is unacceptable and will be answered with significant consequences for Azerbaijan. Once destroyed, Armenian religious and cultural heritage is irreplaceable and its destruction will leave our world and the Christian community, a poorer place.
Religious Persecution and Ongoing Ethnic Cleansing in Artsakh 2023
June 13, 2023
January 22, 2023
120,000 Christians Including 30,000 Children are Under Siege
Help stop genocide, ethnic cleansing and starvation
Since December 12, 2022, Azerbaijan has blockaded the only land corridor connecting 120,000 indigenous Christian Armenians in the landlocked autonomous region of Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh in Armenian) to Armenia. This siege continues decades of cruel tactics to advance the ethnic cleansing of the remaining Armenian population on the land.
- Food, medicine, reproductive healthcare products, baby formula and other critical essentials are dwindling; heating gas, electricity, telephone communications and internet connections are frequently shut off as another form of Azerbaijan’s provocation of the Armenian Christians who have lived in Artsakh for more than two thousand years.
- The ongoing blockade impacts religious freedoms in several ways, including violating the right to a pilgrimage.
- In September 2020, Azerbaijan launched an unprovoked, 44-day war against Artsakh.
- The lopsided war had Azerbaijan–with technologically-advanced military weapons and radical Islamist mercenaries (paid and transported to Artsakh by NATO-member Turkey)–against a civilian population with a small army.
- On November 9, 2020, Russia intervened, forcing a ceasefire statement.
- Azerbaijan now controls much of the historic Artsakh territories, while a “Russian peacekeeping” contingent attempts to maintain stability, but that has not completely stopped Azerbaijan from further acts of violence.
- Azerbaijan has made its goals clear: ethnically cleanse the land of all traces of Christian Armenians who have lived there for millennia and assume full control of Artsakh.
- Azerbaijan is systematically eradicating traces of Armenian religious and cultural heritage sites to claim the land. This cultural genocide involves the outright destruction and false reclassification of Christian churches, monasteries, and carved cross-stones (khatchkars), which are listed on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Heritage of Humanity.
© 2008, H.L Petrosyan
- Once destroyed, the Christian religious and Armenian cultural heritage is irreplaceable.
Photos from BBC footage
- In territories controlled by Azerbaijan, Armenian Christian worshippers cannot access churches for prayer or pilgrimages. The clergy who have remained to safeguard the ancient churches and monasteries are surrounded by Azerbaijani forces who continue to isolate, intimidate, and harass them. The religious rights of Armenian POWs, whom Azerbaijani still illegally holds, are being violated on a daily basis: the baptismal pendant crosses of the POWs have been confiscated and desecrated; there are reports of forced conversions, and priests are not allowed to visit the POWs.
- The 120,000 Artsakh residents are subjugated to psychological threats to force their departure from their ancestral lands. Azerbaijan broadcasts intimidating messages to the villagers by loudspeaker and regularly disrupts their heating gas supply, to further distress the daily lives of the Armenians.
Help press Azerbaijan for an immediate, unconditional lifting of the Lachin corridor blockade to allow for land and air humanitarian assistance.