By Lia Avagyan
Azerbaijan has destroyed an Armenian-Russian cemetery in the Nagorno-Karabakh town of Shushi, the Caucasus Heritage Watch project said in a report Saturday.
Based on satellite imagery, the report said the cemetery was destroyed in May to make way for the construction of a wastewater treatment facility.
The destroyed heritage includes five medieval Armenian khachkars, or cross-stones, dating back about 800 years, as well as dozens of tombstones from the 19th century.
While most of the burials belong to Armenian residents of the town, the cemetery also preserved traces of the Russian imperial presence, including the grave of a Moscow-born German woman from an academic family.
“The site preserved evidence for the diverse communities that inhabited nineteenth-century Shusha,” the report said, using the Azerbaijani form of the town’s name.
Several other Armenian cemeteries have been destroyed by Azerbaijan in recent years in Nagorno-Karabakh, along with numerous Armenian churches.
“CHW calls on Azerbaijan to put a stop to the cycles of destruction,” the report said in its conclusion.
Read the full report here.
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