Yervant1 Posted April 4, 2006 Report Share Posted April 4, 2006 What moral right do we have, to ask Azeries to respect our cemetaries, when we don't respect it ourselves. Out of all establishments, our church which is supposed to be the bastion of our faith and culture is the culprit who is desecrating the 300 years old cemetary. ARMENIAN CEMETERY IN CYPRUS IN PITIABLE STATE By Georges der Parthogh AZG Armenian Daily 04/04/2006 The Nicosia Municipality has threatened to sue the Armenian Church for failing to implement a court order demanding that the 300-year-old Armenian cemetery be restored. Doctor Vahakn Atarayan, Armenian representative in the Cypriot Parliament, said that eleven months have passed since the municipality asked the church to bring the historic 18th century cemetery back to its pre-bulldozer state, but nobody is dealing with the problem and nothing is being done. Last April demolition work at the. cemetery was halted after the Ministry of the Interior took out an injunction to stop the work. The Armenian Prelature had started digging up the graves, as part of its plane to put remains together in a new communal pit adjacent to the small chapel, and convert the area to a park, while rumors were ripe that it would be sold to real estate developers. The late Bedros Kalaydjian who was the Armenian Representative at the time had deplored the decision of the Church and had said that "the demolition was carried out in an unprofessional manner and caused a lot of grief and an insult to the memory of the deceased." Berge Kouyoumdjian is a concerned member of the community. In a letter to the local press he said: "It is almost the first anniversary of the cemetery's cynical desecration, and I remember that soon after this outrage, the municipality delivered an order with a time limit of one month, instructing those responsible to restore this sacred site, repair the chapel and clean up the area. Nearly a year on, this order remains ignored and. the cemetery is now in an even worse state. There is rubbish all over and the area looks like a landfill site. Shards of human bone crushed by the bulldozers and mixed into the soil are scattered on the surface so that it is impossible not to walk on them. Historic headstones lie in a heap and exhumed bones fill black rubbish bags in the derelict chapel. When will we, the descendants of over 400 souls buried there, see restoration work started on this European heritage site? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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