Regarding Simon Maghakyan’s “A Vicious Circle of Cultural Erasure in Azerbaijan” (Opinion, March 24):
Unlike Mr. Maghakyan, who has never lived in Karabakh nor seen the horrendous aspects of the war in the early 1990s, I am from the city of Fuzuli — a frontline city in the war that was occupied by Armenia in 1993 when I was ten years old. The city and hundreds of villages — home to over 100 thousand people — lost all their infrastructure, together with its cultural heritage, due to the occupation.
While Mr. Maghakyan acknowledges the damage to Azerbaijan’s cultural heritage due to Armenia’s actions, but he claims that “there is no evidence of a systematic, let alone state-sponsored, wipe.” For the sake of equity and objectivity, it should be noted the recent field reports by Wall Street Journal, New York Times, BBC, and Euronews from the previously Armenia occupied territories revealed the desolate region — about the size of Northern Ireland — stripped of all infrastructure and cultural heritage. This large area — home to almost 750,000 Azerbaijani displaced persons who were forced to flee in 1992–1993, is now devoid of any building, let alone any tangible cultural property.
Recently, the EU Parliament adopted a resolution highlighting the “irreversible destruction of Azerbaijan’s cultural heritage in the former conflict areas returned by Armenia to Azerbaijan, particularly the almost total destruction and looting of Aghdam and Fuzuli.” Given the scale of the damages, I do not believe that this was anything but systematic and state policy. So far, Armenia has neither apologized nor paid compensation for the damage done to Azerbaijan’s cultural heritage in the previously occupied territories.
Best regards,
Nurlan Mustafayev
