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Minister: Foreign companies to be blacklisted for activity in Karabakh

19 April 2017 13:43 (UTC+04:00)
Minister: Foreign companies to be blacklisted for activity in Karabakh

By Rashid Shirinov

Any foreign company involved in excavations or reconstruction of historical monuments in the Azerbaijani territories occupied by Armenia will be included into the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry’s ‘blacklist’.

Culture and Tourism Minister Abulfas Garayev announced about this while talking to reporters on April 18, adding that apart from blacklisting, Azerbaijan will also cease its cooperation with these companies.

“Recently, it has become known that under the pretext of scientific study some of our historical monuments located in the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region are being excavated in order to falsify history,” he said.

“Unfortunately, scientists from other countries are sometimes involved in this,” Garayev said, noting that the Ministry has already voiced its concern in this regard.

“We, as the Ministry, have already expressed our concern to UNESCO and ISESCO,” Garayev said.

Since the beginning of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and occupation of Azerbaijani territories, the Armenian aggressors destroyed 1,200 historical and architectural monuments, looted 27 museums, over 100,000 items were exported to Armenia. In addition, the Armenian occupiers destroyed 152 religious monuments and 62 mosques, 4.6 million books in 927 libraries, including the Holy Quran and rare Islamic manuscripts.

As a result, the damages caused by Armenia during the years of occupation of Azerbaijani lands hit about $818 billion.

The destruction and damage of historical and cultural monuments by the Armenian invaders in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan contradict the 1954 Hague convention on the preservation of cultural values during armed conflicts, the 1992 European convention on preservation of archeological heritages, and the 1972 UNESCO convention on preservation of world cultural and natural heritages.

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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz

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