{"id":2003,"date":"2026-05-04T20:50:52","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T20:50:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/caucasusheritage.cornell.edu\/?p=2003"},"modified":"2026-05-04T20:50:53","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T20:50:53","slug":"cultural-destruction-in-khankendi-stepanakert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/caucasusheritage.cornell.edu\/?p=2003","title":{"rendered":"Cultural Destruction in Khankendi\/Stepanakert"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo credit: Armineaghayan on Wikimedia Commons<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Amidst reports of the destruction of Armenian religious sites in the city of Stepanakert\/Khankendi, CHW today reported that the Armenian Genocide memorial in Stepanakert\/Khankendi has been destroyed (see featured image above). Erected on the 100th<\/sup> anniversary of the 1915 atrocities, the white marble bell tower once housed a reliquary containing human remains from Der Zor\u2014the Syrian desert town where hundreds of thousands of Armenians perished. Satellite imagery from Airbus and @Planet shows that the monument, as well as an associated memorial complex, were destroyed between July 14, 2025, and April 25, 2026. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

CHW\u2019s assessment adds to a concerning wave of heritage destruction in Khankendi\/Stepanakert in early 2026. Last month, CHW first confirmed reports of the destruction of the 2019 Holy Mother of God Cathedral, between March 3 and April 2, using Sentinel imagery, which offers low spatial resolution but high temporal resolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Subsequent high-resolution imagery surfaced last week, published in RFE\/RL<\/a>. Here we reinforce these findings with CHW\u2019s monitoring imagery. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We also provide CHW\u2019s monitoring imagery for the destruction of the 2007 Saint Jacob church, likewise reported last week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The concentrated destruction of Armenian religious sites and cultural monuments across Khankendi\/Stepanakert suggest a coordinated program of heritage erasure that must stop, as per the @CIJ_ICJ provisional measure of Dec. 2021.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Amidst reports of the destruction of Armenian religious sites in the city of Stepanakert\/Khankendi, CHW today reported that the Armenian Genocide memorial in Stepanakert\/Khankendi has been destroyed (see featured image above). Erected on the 100th anniversary of the 1915 atrocities, the white marble bell tower once housed a reliquary containing human remains from Der Zor\u2014the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2004,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"saved_in_kubio":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-heritage-monitoring"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/caucasusheritage.cornell.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/caucasusheritage.cornell.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/caucasusheritage.cornell.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caucasusheritage.cornell.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caucasusheritage.cornell.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2003"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/caucasusheritage.cornell.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2003\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2009,"href":"https:\/\/caucasusheritage.cornell.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2003\/revisions\/2009"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caucasusheritage.cornell.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/caucasusheritage.cornell.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caucasusheritage.cornell.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caucasusheritage.cornell.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}