A CULTURAL GENOCIDE
Dec, 2004-  Catholic Insight Magazine
�I should like to see any power of the world destroy this race, this small tribe of unimportant people, whose wars have all been fought and lost, whose structures have crumbled, literature is unread, music is unheard, and prayers are no more answered. Go ahead, destroy Armenia. See if you can do it. Send them into the desert without bread or water. Burn their homes and churches. Then see if they will not laugh, sing and pray again. For when two of them meet anywhere in the world, see if they will not create a New Armenia.�     William Saroyan
�When the Taliban in Afghanistan was destroying the figure of the Buddha all human kind cried bloody murder.  But why when Azerbaijan destroys Armenian relics and uses them for building materials does the world stands silent?�

�It�s a �A cultural genocide,� says Dr. Armen Haghnazarian from Research of Armenian Architecture (RAA) which for the last 30 years has been documenting the remains of Armenian churches and calling for a stop of its destruction in neighboring Azerbaijan, Turkey and Georgia.
Here on the boarders of Islam conflict is a part of life for the Christian Armenians and which goes all the way back to the days when they stood between pagan Rome and Zoroastrian Persia. Though the Armenian nation officially declared itself Christian in 301,  30 years before Constantine did the same, they claim their Christian roots to the Apostles Bartholomew and Thaddeus who were martyred here and which gave the name to the Armenian Apostolic church.

This once glorious empire stretched from the Caspian to the Black Sea and included much of present day Turkey and Iran. Today it is the smallest of Caucasian nations, roughly the size of Maryland, and which boarders Islamic Turkey, Iran, Azerbaijan and Orthodox Georgia to the north � leaving many of its important religious monuments in the care of its Muslim neighbors

For a thousand years the rolling hills around the town of Jugha in Azerbaijan territory had been a sight of massive pink, red and gray Cross Stones, or �Khachkars�, are a sacred Armenian art form of sculptured crosses set into the face of massive stone blocks and surrounded with an array of symbolism and arabesque ornamentation.

What had always been viewed as Jugha�s garden of Khachkars were slowly being plucked over time till less than a couple thousand remained. Then in 1998, Armenians from the Iranian side of the boarder watched in horror as bulldozers arrived and began knocking down the remaining vestiges of their past.
RAA�s repeated complaints to UNESCO brought a mere mention in their yearly report and a pause in the demolition.  But too little and too late � as after the smoke cleared demolition resumed and today all that is left is the scattered fragments of a thousand year old art.



Why? According to Dr. Armen Haghnazarian the Azerbaijan plan is a simple one. After having dispelled the Armenian people their intentions are to now completely bury their presence thus erasing any future claims to the land.
City Of a Thousand Churches.....
It is no surprise that this 3,000 year old civilization that sits under the shadows of Mount Ararat, where Noah�s ark is believed to have come to rest, would ultimately turn to the bounty of stone that surrounds them in order to express themselves.

They built their religious edifices out of the pink volcanic tufa that has the unique properties to harden over time. Their walls were built thick, able to withstand the many conflicts of this tumultuous region, but the old architects never had in mind that they would be going up against bulldozers, rocket fire and dynamite �..

The historical Armenian capital of Ani, once known as the �city of a thousand churches�, located today within the boarders of modern Turkey is a literal ghost town of crumbling churches of which only about ten remain standing.

Armenians claim the sad state of churches in Ani is a result of neglect, vandalism and in some cases intentional destruction but archeologist Dr. Beyhan Karamagarale from University at Ankara, who has been digging at Ani for the past 15 years, says the poor state of Ani churches is due to the natural causes of time, war and by pointing the finger back at the Armenians she claims recent destruction has been the cause of the rumble of explosions coming from the Armenian quarry that stands a literal stones through away across the bordering Apax river.
SEE PAGE TWO- A Cultural Genocide
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