Христианские меньшинства в Аз-не

[SAS]

Agence France Presse -- English

February 17, 2005 Thursday 4:23 AM GMT

Christian minority in Azerbaijan gets rid of Armenian eye sore

NIJ, Azerbaijan Feb 17

When a Christian people in this predominantly Muslim republic ground

away the Armenian inscriptions from the walls of a church and tombs

last month to erase evidence linking them to Azerbaijan's foe, they

thought they had the interests of their small community in mind.

But now the tiny Christian church in the former Soviet republic of

Azerbaijan has become the focus of a big scandal as the Udi minority

struggles to find its identity in an ideological minefield.

The church, which has not been used since Azerbaijan became part of

the Soviet Union, has become the center of a dispute between the

Norwegian backers of the reconstruction, who consider the alterations

to be vandalism, and the Udi community.

"We have no God, our people lost their religion under communism and

this church is our only hope of reviving it," said Georgi Kechaari,

one of the village elders who doubles as the ethnic group's

historian.

"But we live in Azerbaijan, and when people came into the church and

saw Armenian letters, they automatically associated us with

Armenians," he said.

The Udi, who once used the Armenian alphabet, have struggled to

separate their legacy from that of their fellow Christians, the

Armenians, who fought a war with Azerbaijan and have been vilified

here.

Erupting just before the break-up of the Soviet Union, the war cost

both countries tens of thousands of lives but Azerbaijan lost

Nagorno-Karabakh - an ethnic Armenian enclave - and seven other

surrounding regions which have been under Armenian control since the

two countries signed an uneasy ceasefire agreement in 1994.

Since then nearly everything associated with Armenia in Azerbaijan

has been wiped away, although hundreds of thousands of Armenians

lived here before the war.

Armenian-sounding city names have been changed, streets named after

Armenians have been replaced with politically correct Azeri surnames,

while Soviet history glorifying Armenian communist activists has been

rewritten in school textbooks.

But the white-stone church in Nij, some two centuries old, had not

been tampered with until the Udi undertook to reconstruct it with

help from the state financed Norwegian Humanitarian Enterprise (NHE).

"It was a beautiful inscription, 200 years old, it even survived the

war," Norway's Ambassador to Azerbaijan Steinar Gil told AFP. "This

is an act of vandalism and Norway in no way wants to be associated

with it."

But the Udis insist they erased the inscriptions to right a historic

wrong.

Kechaari alleged that the Armenian inscriptions, which stated that

the Church was built in 1823, were fakes put there by Armenians in

the 1920s so that they could make historical claims to it.

The Udis are the last surviving tribe of the Caucasus Albanians, a

group unrelated to the Mediterranean Albanians, whose Christian

kingdom ruled this region in medieval times before Turkic hordes

swept in from Central Asia in the 13th and 15th centuries.

They number under 10,000 people and Nij is the only predominantly Udi

village to survive to this day, and although they call themselves

Christian, there is little that Christians from other parts of the

world would find in common with them.

The Udis have not had a pastor for nearly a century and celebrate

Islamic holidays together with their Muslim neighbors.

But while the Udis soul search for an identity, Azerbaijan has used

their legacy to strengthen its claims to Karabakh.

Armenians argue that the multitude of churches in the occupied region

proves that they as a Christian people can lay a historic claim to

it. But Azeris, who consider themselves to be the descendants of

Albanians who were assimilated into a Turkic group, say the area is

rightfully theirs because the churches were actually built by their

ancestors the Albanians.

To the Udi, who used Armenian script when their church was built,

toeing the official Azeri line has become more of a priority than

historical accuracy.

The perception that they are one with the Armenians has meant that

there has been little trust from the authorites; Udi men for example

were only allowed to start serving in the Azeri Army two years ago.

But their use of power tools to fit the status quo took their

Norwegian sponsors by surprise.

"They think they have erased a reminder of being Armenian ... instead

they have taken away the chance to have a good image when the church

is inaugurated," the director of the NHE in Azerbaijan, Alf Henry

Rasmussen said, adding that a visit to the church by Norway's prime

minister will probably now be cancelled.

"Everyone will stare at the missing stones, I'm not quite sure if we

can continue our work there," Rasmussen said.

[Rouna]

Es inchqa~n en vakhecats ed mardik... Vakhic sksecin mahmedakan toner nshel, vakhic moracan irenc isk tonery, hima el sarsap e ynkel srtnery vor mitom "hye" petq e asen nranc, verjin khelqn el korcrecin... Apsos...

[Artsrun]

Et mardik tox irenc "vaxecats anmegh garan" tegh chdnen. Tyurkeri hetevits gnacin, amen haykakan@ merzhelov, gitein te irenc aghvanakan mshakuity renaissance -ne ekel, ev verjapes shner@ iranc mi bani tex en dnum. Irank el, iranc hoksern el ...

[Armenian Genocide]

the Armenian inscriptions after being taken off from the Church. [attachmentid=11194]

[Armenian Genocide]

Armenian inscription in the Nij church before its "reconstruction." [attachmentid=11195]

[Armenian Genocide]

During the "reconstruction." [attachmentid=11196]