‘Servants, followers of Armenian Church must have unrestricted access to Shushi’s Ghazanchetsots Church’ – MFA

Alongside with the physical damage inflicted upon Shushi’s Ghazanchetsots Church, Azerbaijan does not stop attempts to distort the Armenian identity of the church, which is carried out by changing the architectural look of the church under the pretext of renovation, Armenian Foreign Ministry’s spokesperson Vahan Hunanyan said in a statement on the occasion of the anniversary of the double bombing of the Cathedral by the Azerbaijani armed forces.

“During the military aggression unleashed against Artsakh and its people on October 8, 2020, the Azerbaijani armed forces launched air strikes twice on Shushi’s Ghazanchetsots Church with high-precision weapons, causing significant damages to the latter. Shortly after the November 9 trilateral statement the same church was vandalized and desecrated”, Vahan Hunanyan said.

According to him, the deliberate bombing of the church is not only a criminal act to be condemned by the international law, but also is a symbolic discovery of intentions, as it is an obvious demonstration of the policy of Azerbaijan to eliminate any trace of Armenian presence in the territory of Artsakh.

“A year after the aggression unleashed by Azerbaijan against Artsakh, the fate of nearly 1500 historical-cultural heritage and worship sites, as well as thousands of museum exhibits in the territories of Artsakh, which came under the Azerbaijani control, remains uncertain and in danger. There are numerous cases proving the deliberate destructions and vandalism of Armenian churches, cultural and oth...