The press secretary of the Armenian Foreign Ministry on Friday commented on the statements by the President of Azerbaijan, made at a meeting with the General Director of Iesko.
"The statements of the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev on January 13 at a meeting with the general director of Iesko Salim Ben Mohammed Al-Maliki once again prove that the Armenian cultural heritage on the territories controlled by Azerbaijan is under a serious threat and this country cannot be a guarantor of proper protection of cultural and religious monuments.
The distortion of the identity of the Armenian heritage is an attempt of "cultural ladder", which is also a gross violation of the relevant international legal instruments.
Thousands of Armenian religious and secular monuments were created hundreds of years before Azerbaijan and have nothing to do with Azerbaijani identity. Attempts to alienate these monuments from the Armenian people do not have a historical nor theological nor moral justification.
It is noteworthy that Azerbaijan also put forward the "thesis about the Albanian affiliation" to justify the destruction of Armenian Khachkarov in Nakhijevan, which testifies to the danger of the practice of destroying and distorting the identity of the Armenian monuments.
The false scientific thesis on the representation of the Christian heritage of Armenians or other peoples of the region as Albanian is not seriously distributed outside of Azerbaijan and is not perceived by the International Academic Community.
It is noteworthy that President Aliyev made the statements mentioned in the presence of the General Director of the Islamic Organization for Education, Science and Culture with an attempt to give religious color to the protection of cultural heritage.
Undermining the efforts of the international community to preserve the cultural heritage of Artsakh, Azerbaijan continues to repair the problems of international specialized organizations, primarily UNESCO, to visit the region, accusing them in bias. While Azerbaijan is irresponsibly speculating with a religious factor in the case when Armenia has always performed from the standpoint of interfaith dialogue and civilization cooperation, considering cultural heritage as universal and universal value.
The preservation of many Armenian historical, cultural and religious monuments, which were under the control of Azerbaijan, should become an important part of the peace process, given the numerous facts of systematic destruction of the Armenian cultural and religious heritage in the past. In this context, the leadership and state propaganda car of Azerbaijan should immediately put an end to the reprehensive approach to the illegal assignment and distortion of the identity of the Armenian churches, at least to show due respect and prevent cases of vandalism.
Assigning cultural values or their distortion, the oppression of the rights of the Armenian people does not contribute to the regional world. In this aspect, the proper protection of religious shrines, both with practical and moral point of view, can create prerequisites for peace in the region.