Caucasus Heritage Watch has confirmed the destruction of an Armenian cemetery in the village of Sghnakh, as first reported by Monument Watch.

The area was bulldozed in connection with road construction.

Monument Watch reports that the cemetery was founded in the mid-18th c. and remained in use until Armenians evacuated the village following the fall 2020 war. Satellite imagery indicates that the destruction took place between April 12 and June 18.

CHW called on Azerbaijan’s authorities to stop the destruction of cemeteries and act as stewards of all cultural heritage on their territory.

This is the second historic cemetery destroyed along the new Fuzuli-Shushi road, after Mets Tagher.

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.