“Our lands were under occupation, and during that time, we experienced bitter lessons,” MP Rizvan Nabiyev said during today's session of the Milli Majlis (Parliament of Azerbaijan), in the discussion on the proposed amendment to the law “On the Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments,” APA reports.
The MP emphasized that the ownership of a place or a location by a nation is not measured solely by international law: “What is accepted is that if a people have lived in a certain place for a long time, there must be material cultural heritage belonging to them. The question of Shusha belonging to us has been raised repeatedly. And there are numerous factors that answer this. One of them is the renowned German scholar Hesse. He knew our language very well, and in his book about the heritage of Shusha, he wrote that at the end of the 19th century, 95 Azerbaijani poets and writers, 38 composers, and 22 Azerbaijani singers lived in Shusha and the surrounding areas. If we compare this with what Armenians claim, they would not even be able to name a single figure from that period. The amendment we are making to the current law also stipulates that if the territories of a nation or a state are subjected to occupation, and if their monuments are seized as spoils, then the issue should be raised before international organizations and reports should be presented. In order to prepare and present such reports, we need this process of documentation and registration (passportization).”
Rizvan Nabiyev stated that in 1977, under the initiative of national leader Heydar Aliyev, the central part of Shusha was declared a historical and cultural reserve: “Today, efforts are being made to have that area included in the list of protected monuments under the UNESCO Convention.”
The MP also added that during the occupation period, 437 cultural monuments were seriously damaged: “Imagine, in the territory of the Khojaly district, a monument called Pirlar was used as a weapons depot. This is an Albanian Christian monument. This fact shows that even though the opposing side is Christian, they did not respect even a Christian monument.”
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