Rubinyan tells UN General Assembly President that UNESCO reps must visit Nagorno-Karabakh

YEREVAN, July 26. /ARKA/. Armenia's National Assembly Deputy Speaker Ruben Rubinyan received on Tuesday UN General Assembly President Abdullah Shahid, the parliament's press service reported.
It said Rubinyan praised Shahid's presidency of the 76th session of the General Assembly. He praised also the UN Office in Yerevan for promoting the ongoing reforms in Armenia, and thanked the UN for the contribution to the development of the parliament's potential.
Rubinyan stressed the need for UNESCO and other UN agencies to visit Nagorno-Karabakh, especially in the context of the threat to its Armenian spiritual and cultural heritage. Other regional security issues were also discussed, the National Assembly said.
After the end of hostilities in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone in 2020 autumn, thousands of Armenian cultural and historical monuments appeared in Azerbaijani-controlled areas and at risk of complete destruction.
According to a January 2021 report from the office of the Nagorno-Karabakh Human Rights Defender, at least 1,456 Armenian historical, cultural, and religious sites fell under the control of Azerbaijan. They include 161 monasteries and churches, 591 khachkars (cross stones), 345 tombstones and inscribed stones, 108 tombs, cemeteries, burial mounds, and sanctuaries, and 43 fortresses, castles and palaces.
A resolution passed by the European Parliament in March, 2022 strongly condemned Azerbaijan’s continued policy of erasing and denying the Armenian cultural heritage in and around Nagorno-Karabakh.
The resolution adopted with 635 votes to two, with 42 abstentions, referred to 1,456, mainly Armenian monuments that came under Azerbaijani control after the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War.
It came after the Azerbaijani authorities announced plans to erase Armenian inscriptions on churches which Azerbaijan claims are Caucasian Albanian.
‘The erasure of the Armenian cultural heritage is part of a wider pattern of a systematic, state-level policy of Armenophobia, historical revisionism, and hatred towards Armenians promoted by the Azerbaijani authorities, including dehumanisation, the glorification of violence, and territorial claims against the Republic of Armenia which threaten peace and security in the South Caucasus’, the resolution read.
The resolution also called out the ‘falsification of history’ in the region and attempts to ‘present it as so-called Caucasian Albanian’.
The resolution said Azerbaijan’s actions were a violation of international law and cited a ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
The adopted document also touched upon the destruction of Armenian cultural heritage in Nakhchivan over the past three decades, accusing Azerbaijan of causing irreparable damage to 89 Armenian churches, 20,000 graves, and more than 5,000 headstones. -0-