Azerbaijan has demolished the historic Armenian Church of St. John the Baptist (known as Kanach Zham), constructed in 1818, located in the occupied region of Shushi (Nagorno-Karabakh/Artsakh), the European Armenian Federation for Justice and Democracy (EAFJD) reveals in a statement.

“Satellite images confirm that the church was razed to the ground in February 2024,” EAFJD said, also sharing satellite imagery.

“This deliberate act by Azerbaijan signifies a systematic erasure of Armenian heritage from their ancestral lands.”

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.