Hayk Demoyan: “Turkey must be subjected to responsibility for the elimination of the Armenian historic-cultural monuments”

YEREVAN, APRIL 20, ARMENPRESS: Turkey must be subjected to responsibility for the elimination of the Armenian historic-cultural monuments, director of the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute Hayk Demoyan said at the “Cultural Genocide” conference launched today in Yerevan. He said the Armenian Genocide committed in Turkey stage by stage during the previous century had its continuation during the reign of different Turkish administrations the points of the policy of which was the cultural genocide.

Hayk Demoyan said in Turkey for years not only the historic-cultural values of Armenians but of the other nations have also been eliminated. “Moreover, the Turkish side, enjoying the impunity, puts into trade circulation cultural values having thousands of years of history. Turkey has violated provisions of a number of international conventions on the protection of historic-cultural values and remained unpunished,” Demoyan said. He noted that the Turkish side is trying with all its propaganda means and different activities avoid the responsibility but realizing the approaching danger it restores Van’s Akhtamar Church, circulates talks about its readiness to renovate few churches.

Hayk Demoyan said that it is a delusion the goal of which is to divert the international community from the possible variant of serious punishment of Turkey. “We must use all our opportunities, we must unite our strength and act coordinately. We must prepare a comprehensive package of activities and present it to the Armenian authorities. We must be successive in our strive to punish the guilty,” Demoyan noted. He considered the preparation of the mentioned package up-to-dated as the elimination of the Armenian monuments is nowadays being implemented in Azerbaijan and the bright example of it are Nakhichevani cross-stones. In this case Demoyan pointed out the importance of visits of monitoring groups to Turkey and Azerbaijan but the latter do not agree to it.

Referring to the contemporary regulation of such crimes, head of the international agreements department of the Armenian Constitutional Court Vladimir Vardanyan noted that today the contemporary international right is rather inert in respect of defining the “cultural genocide” meaning, it prevents from registering this definition in different international documents.

“When the Declaration on the Rights of Ethnic People was being adopted by the UN General Assembly, its draft was intending cultural genocide definition but it was withdrawn from the final document. The present international right is intending many other means for fighting against elimination of cultural values, particularly a number of conventions adopted within the framework of UNESCO and other documents. Nevertheless, cultural genocide in the international right is not perceived as a peculiar element of genocide or part of genocide. I think there is a necessity to work out a separate document about the cultural genocide,” V. Vardanyan said.