VIDEO: Azerbaijanis Destroy Memorial in Artsakh's Hakaku Village

On January 15, 2024, several Armenian Telegram channels published a video captured by Azerbaijani soldiers at the beginning of the year, showing them at a memorial dedicated to the participants from Hakaku village who were killed during the First Nagorno-Karabakh War.

This information was reported by the website monumentwatch.org, which monitors cultural heritage in Artsakh.

The footage reveals that the memorial plaques have been shattered and desecrated. In the video, Azerbaijani soldiers are seen with assault rifles displaying the broken memorial plaques while using vulgar language, touching the shattered pieces, and striking them. It is crucial to note that the soldiers are moving and handling the broken memorials with their firearms. Some plaques show signs of bullet impacts.

It is difficult to ascertain from the video when exactly the memorial was defiled. Given that many areas in the occupied Hadrut region of Artsakh have military personnel stationed there, as seen in Azerbaijani videos, it is likely that they were responsible for vandalizing the memorial.

Our Response
According to the 1954 Hague Convention, which serves as a foundation for other international treaties, its first article defines cultural property as “movable or immovable heritage of great importance to every people, regardless of its origin or owner, such as monuments of architecture, art, or history, irrespective of their religious or secular nature.” Under Article 4 of the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, any act of vandalism, theft, looting, appropriation, enmity, or reprisal against cultural heritage is prohibited. According to the first protocol of the 1954 Hague Convention, it is forbidden to destroy cultural or spiritual values in occupied territories.