Anti-Armenian hatred in Azerbaijan scars history and culture, Italian lawmaker Emanuele Pozzolo said in a post on X on February 29.

“The bust in memory of Charles Aznavour, one of the greatest singers of the world, has been torn down in Stepanakert,” Pozzolo said.

“Anti-Armenian hatred, in addition to tearing down Christian crosses, scars history and culture!”

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.