Azerbaijanis have completely destroyed the village of Mariamadzor in the Hadrut region of Artsakh. Monument Watch is reporting this.
“In 2025, user Ararat Poghosyan published a video with satellite images on the Internet, which confirms that Azerbaijanis have completely destroyed the village of Mariamadzor in the Hadrut region of Artsakh. Satellite images taken in 2019 and 2024 document the complete destruction of the village.
It should be noted that the settlement came under the control of Azerbaijan after the signing of the trilateral statement on November 9, 2020.
The village of Mariamadzor was one of the picturesque villages of Hadrut (Fig. 1).
The historical and cultural monuments of the village include the 16th-17th centuries St. Minas Church (1601), the Shenin Bridge, the Vnesaberd Fortress, etc.
The Artsakh Cultural Heritage Monitoring Program has described in detail the village's St. Minas Church (Fig. 2), which was located in the southwestern part of the village. The church was built in 1601, as evidenced by the inscription on the entrance door: “Tv[in] .РС.” According to M. Barkhudaryants, the northern arch bears the inscription of the church's builder: “I, Azaria ab[e]gha David Erets, who built the church, the owner of the church.” On the other side of the same arch, there is another inscription: “My cross belongs to Baghdasari, to his wife…” (for details, see: St. Minas Church in Mariamadzor).
And on the tributary flowing through the village was the Shenin Bridge (Fig. 3), which connected the two main districts of the village. In the immediate vicinity of the bridge is the Shenin Spring (see: Shenin Bridge in Mariamadzor).
The village also had the Vnesaberd Fortress, founded in the 12th-14th centuries, which served until the 18th century.
Our response
The destruction of the village of Mariamadzor by Azerbaijan during the war and throughout the occupation is a series of crimes combined, violating both international norms of heritage protection during wartime and the principles of authenticity and integrity established by UNESCO, as well as the decisions of the International Court of Justice (Decision of the International Court of Justice on Azerbaijan’s Violations of the 1965 Convention against All Forms of Racial Discrimination - Monument Watch). The damage inflicted on the village is a “grave breach” under Article 4 of the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict and Article 15(a) of the Second Protocol adopted in 1999, which, as a war crime, can be prosecuted in international courts.
The destruction of the village of Mariamadzor is a war crime, according to Article 8, paragraph 2, of the Rome Statute, which specifically states that “For the purposes of this Statute, ‘war crimes’ mean intentional attacks on buildings dedicated to religious, educational, cultural, scientific or charitable purposes, historical monuments, hospitals and places where the sick and wounded are concentrated, provided that the said objects are not military objectives (Article 8, paragraph 2, sub-paragraph (b), subparagraph (ix)),” the statement said.
