Satellite imagery shows that between April 10 and June 5, the 51 sculptures in the park of the Shushi Museum of Fine Arts in Nagorno-Karabakh were removed and the area completely cleared, Caucasus Heritage Watch reports.
CHW said they are concerned about the condition of these artworks, which are the property of that museum. The have asked the Azerbaijani authorities to disclose the location of the confiscated sculptures and plans for public access.
"Were curators and conservationists involved in their removal? Is the removal in line with Chapman Taylor’s new master plan for the city?," CHW charged on Twitter.
During the recent military hostilities, Azerbaijani forces launched two targeted attacks on the Holy Savior Ghazanchetsots Cathedral in Shushi. Azerbaijan earlier "restored" a church by replacing its Armenian inscription with glass art. Furthermore, Azeri President Ilham Aliyev visited the region of Hadrut in territories occupied by Azerbaijan and declared his intention to "renovate" a 12th century Armenian church, which he claimed to "an Albanian church". Aliyev went so far as to accuse Armenians of leaving "fake inscriptions" in the Armenian language.
Concerns about the preservation of cultural sites in Nagorno-Karabakh are made all the more urgent by the Azerbaijani government’s history of systemically destroying indigenous Armenian heritage—acts of both warfare and historical revisionism. The Azerbaijani government has secretly destroyed a striking number of cultural and religious artifacts in the late 20th century. Within Nakhichevan alone, a historically Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan, Azerbaijani forces destroyed at least 89 medieval churches, 5,840 khachkars (Armenian cross stones) and 22,000 historical tombstones between 1997 and 2006.
