by Siranush Sargsyan
This year, on the eve of the 111th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, Azerbaijani authorities razed the Cathedral of the Holy Mother of God in Artsakh’s capital, Stepanakert.
The intricate Armenian cross-stones within the church grounds, a sacred art form known as khachkars and inscribed on UNESCO’s intangible heritage list, were also gone.
This was not an isolated act but part of a sustained, state-led campaign targeting Armenian spiritual and cultural heritage in Artsakh.
In December 2021, the International Court of Justice issued a provisional measure requiring Azerbaijan to halt destruction of Armenian cultural heritage.
Instead, Baku has continued its policy of deliberate erasure, systematically distorting, dismantling, and erasing churches and sacred sites in full view of the international community.
The destruction extends beyond religious sites: entire settlements in Artsakh are being emptied and obliterated following Azerbaijan’s expulsion of the entire Armenian population in 2023 — who numbered 150,000 before the war of aggression launched in 2020.
An indigenous symbol
I was one of those Armenians expelled.
When I am asked where I am from, I always say that I was born and raised near Amaras, one of the oldest Christian monasteries in existence and where the Armenian script was first taught, in Artsakh.
Amaras Monastery dates back to the fourth century, when Armenia adopted Christianity.
In Artsakh, every village and every settlement had its own churches that were never just places of prayer. They were where our sense of belonging took root.
They embody our presence, carrying our identity and memory across centuries.
Around Amaras Monastery, vineyards and mulberry groves stretch across the land, giving way further out to fields of wheat that seem to run without end.
This is where, from an early age, I watched my grandparents, my parents, my community members, and us alongside them work the land together, supporting one another, bound by a shared rhythm of life. At the centre of it all stood the monastery, which we believed would remain our safeguard and refuge.
Before the ethnic cleansing of Artsakh, each settlement told its own story, woven around the church at its heart.
None embodied this more than the Holy Mother of God Cathedral in Stepanakert, which belonged to all of us.
Armenian Christian continuity
I remember the foundation stone laid in 2006; for the next decade we watched it rise before our eyes, gradually claiming its place at the capital city’s core.
From the moment of its consecration, it was cherished by so many.
Though young by the standards of a church, it had already borne witness to some of the most tragic chapters in Artsakh’s recent history: blockade, war, ethnic cleansing, and the ongoing destruction of cultural heritage.
The cathedral was built in full view of worshippers who saw themselves reflected in it.
Stone by stone, it was raised through collective effort, sustained largely by donations, with contributions from across the community and from patrons.
Rising nearly 40 metres high, the three-tiered structure, with its distinctive arches, three entrances, and six columns, drew on the architectural language of the historic Armenian Zvartnots and Hripsime cathedrals, standing as a striking presence in central Stepanakert.
Its 24-metre bell tower added a further sense of scale and distinction. The architect was Gagik Yeranosyan.
The church was consecrated on 7 April, 2019, on the Feast of the Annunciation, by Catholicos of All Armenians Karekin II, becoming the main cathedral of the Artsakh Diocese and marking the 90th church built or restored in Artsakh.
According to Archbishop Pargev Martirosyan, who served as Primate of the Artsakh Diocese from its re-establishment in 1989 until 2021, it was built atop the foundations of a 19th-century Holy Mother of God church, destroyed during the Soviet years, restoring a continuity that had once already been broken.
Throughout the decades of the Soviet Union, Christian Armenians in Artsakh and across Armenia were cut off from one of the central pillars of their identity: their faith.
Religious life was suppressed, churches were closed or destroyed, and belief was pushed into the private sphere.
Under pressure from both Soviet rule and Azerbaijani authorities, the Artsakh movement and the struggle of the 1990s were not only about territory or security, but also about preserving identity and faith.
The revival of Church life that followed came to symbolise a broader spiritual renewal after decades of enforced silence and repression.
A modern war shelter
Historically, Armenian Christian churches have served, not just as sanctuaries, but as refuges in time of danger. The Holy Mother of God Cathedral also took on a new role during wartime.
When Azerbaijan attacked Artsakh in 2020, the cathedral came to embody its very name, becoming a shelter and a form of protection for hundreds of people in Artsakh.
Many had already lost their homes and villages and, having narrowly reached Stepanakert, found refuge in the cathedral’s spacious underground hall, a space originally intended for gatherings and church events.
During the 44-day war in 2020, each night at 11.00 pm, the liturgy was held under the constant sound of falling bombs.
It was there that I met Nora, an 84-year-old grandmother, marking her birthday not in her home in an outlying village of Hadrut, but in the church basement.
During the months of blockade that followed in 2022-2023, I would often see her there. Her village had been occupied by Azerbaijan in the 2020 war. When I spoke with her, she told me the church had become her home. Nora passed away earlier this year in exile in Armenia, at the age of 90.
Throughout the blockade, the cathedral once again gathered people under its wings.
It was always full.
I remember how distressed many were that they could no longer find candles because of Azerbaijan’s blockade, and yet they continued to come, even without them.
The woman who sold candles, sitting beside empty boxes, told me that people now seemed to need God more than ever.
In some way, the absence of ordinary food was being replaced by a search for spiritual sustenance. Amid deprivation, people held on to faith.
Christmas and Easter were still marked, and the fire of Trndez, an ancient Armenian holiday of purification, was lit in the churchyard.
It was during the blockade that the last weddings and baptisms took place in the cathedral.
The collective baptism of hundreds of children born during those months became a rare moment of shared hope, a quiet assertion of faith and the continuity of life in Artsakh.
And when Azerbaijan launched its final attack on 19 September 2023, the doors of the church were once again open. In its basements, mothers with their young children sought shelter, just as they had before.
It is said in Artsakh that the most powerful prayers are those spoken by mothers from the shelters.
Yet the most difficult moment came with the forced displacement.
After saying goodbye to their homes and to the graves of their loved ones, people came to the cathedral to say farewell once more.
I witnessed my own farewell there. Among those final moments was the baptism of a 10-day-old baby, Anna.
Her mother with tear-filled eyes determined that her child would be baptised in the cathedral of Artsakh.
Since the forced expulsion in 2023, each morning for Artsakh Armenians now begins with dread: the fear that from afar we will witness, via satellite photos or a video on social media, yet another fragment of our homeland being reduced to dust.
With every stone, every monument, every church that falls, something within us dies.
Azerbaijan’s destruction of our churches carries a particular weight, which we often feel more acutely than the destruction of our homes and towns, the erasure of which we have also been forced to witness time and again.
The Armenian Genocide is not confined to history in the distant past; it lives on in Artsakh today through erasure, ethnic cleansing, and the systematic destruction of our spiritual life and historical heritage.
As the world celebrates a so-called peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan, I cannot help but ask: what kind of peace is this, built on destruction, expulsion, and violence, enabled by the complicit silence of Armenian authorities and the international community that hails an illusory reconciliation?
The Artsakh Diocese has declared, “no matter how much our condemnations and just demands go unanswered by international structures in preventing the cultural destruction in Artsakh, we will continue, like the widow in the Gospel, to insist on our just cause and our rights.”
The UN’s cultural agency, UNESCO, says it places the needs of Indigenous Peoples amongst its “priority areas for response” and says it works with them “in addressing the multiple challenges they face, while acknowledging their significant role in sustaining the diversity of the world’s cultural and biological landscape”.
9 August marked International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples. On this 9 August, the Armenian population of Artsakh continues to claim their enduring right to return, live, and create in their homeland.
Siranush Sargsyan is a freelance journalist from Artsakh and a leading voice on conflict and culture impacting the Armenian world. She is currently pursuing her MA in Human Rights Advocacy at the Nova School of Law in Lisbon. You can follow her on X @SiranushSargsy1.
