St. Sargis of Mokhrenes/Susanlyg

In the summer of 2022, CHW  documented  the near-complete destruction of the village of Mokhrenes (Arm.) or Susanlyg (Azer.), in the Khojavend region (Arm. Hadrut), an area that had passed to Azerbaijani jurisdiction in 2020 following the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War. Among the destroyed structures was an unassuming village church, St. Sargis, nestled into a hillside, its roof covered in wild grasses. It was constructed in the 18th or 19th centuries, repurposed in the Soviet years, then revived as a church in the 1990s and remained in active use until Armenians evacuated Mokhrenes.

But the demolition of St. Sargis does not appear to have been the last word in Azerbaijan's intervention at the site. In our ongoing monitoring efforts, we have documented evidence of subsequent building activity, which we release to the public here. The new evidence raises questions about Azerbaijan's response to CHW's findings and the pressure on the government to abide by a decision of the International Court of Justice.

One of CHW's earliest satellite images of St. Sargis, captured by Planet Lab's SkySat satellite in October 2021, shows the village and its buildings completely intact (see swipe below). A subsequent image from March 5, 2022 again shows the structure intact (see CHW's  Monitoring Report #4 ). Four months later, in a satellite image captured on July 6, 2022, the church and most of the surrounding buildings appear as rubble. The reflectance of the church is particularly bright in the July 2022 image, perhaps because the white limestone and lime mortar of the structure were imploded by the demolition (see photo gallery below, including image of the church interior, its white plastering added in the Soviet period). ¹ 

CHW re-tasked the SkySat satellites to confirm the ruination of the village and its historic Armenian church. The resulting image, dated August 23, 2022, showed the same destruction pattern across the village, including the ruination of St. Sargis.

The destruction of St. Sargis of Mokhrenes in 2022 was the first documented violation of the interim order indicated by the International Court of Justice (ICJ, or World Court) in December 2021. That "provisional measure", arising from the ongoing case Armenia v. Azerbaijan, ordered Azerbaijan to “take all necessary measures to prevent and punish acts of vandalism and desecration affecting Armenian cultural heritage, including but not limited to churches and other places of worship, monuments, landmarks, cemeteries and artifacts.” ²  This case is ongoing and has yet to be decided on the merits.

Thus, while the old church itself was modest from an art or architectural perspective, its destruction and subsequent building activity now ongoing at the site (detailed below) are highly consequential for these international legal proceedings. The case also raises broader questions concerning how the ICJ responds both to violations of its rulings and to potential efforts to cover up such violations.

In Autumn of 2022, the abandoned heap of demolished stone and plaster at the former church began to show evidence of new activity. An October 25, 2022 image (swipe below, left) shows new developments in the area of the ruined church, including signs of grading (arrow A), a new gate across the road (arrow B), and a cluster of vehicles and/or temporary structures southeast of the church (arrow C).

An April 20, 2023 SkySat image (swipe above, right) shows that most of the buildings of the village remain in the same state of rubble, except for the area of the church. Here, the rubble of the historic building has been cleared and the surrounding area, including the hill slope to the north (see arrow A), has been graded. Bare foundations, either surviving or newly constructed, are clearly visible, with an entrance in the southwest. There is no roof on the church structure. The gate on the road immediately south of the church remains visible (see arrow B) as do the temporary structures (arrow C).

A few months later, a WorldView03 image from Maxar captured on September 26, 2023 shows the further elaboration of construction amidst St. Sargis's ruins (see swipe below, right).

In the detail view of the WorldView03 image below, the shadow cast by the structure's northern wall shows spacing, suggestive of either scaffolding or the studs or vertical members of the new building (see arrow D). A similar shadow is also faintly visible adjacent to the southern wall (see arrow E). The eastern end of the structure appears to have reached the height and shape of a peaked roof support. The interior space of the structure is enigmatic. It appears that a 3-dimensional structure has been situated inside the frame of the building. It is not clear whether the structure has a roof at this stage. (Variation in light and color between the images is due to the different sensors used and at different times of year.)

Beyond the structure itself, the gate controlling access to the site is now more clearly visible on WorldView03, and it is possible to discern hinged doors on either side (see arrow B). Whether the gate is intended to protect the remote work site, or to prevent observers from witnessing the work is unclear. Likewise, the elongated structures to the south (see arrow C) -- tractor-trailers or other construction-related facilities -- are now easier to make out thanks to the improved resolution and the shadows they cast on the road.

By October 22, 2023 (see below), the new structure's earth-toned roof is now clear, and it bears some resemblance to the tiled roof of the original St. Sargis, grown over with vegetation (see first swipe). Indeed, the new building in many ways looks like the old, single-nave vaulted church. But the structure still appears to be situated within the frame of another construction, which is not yet complete or clearly articulated with the building 'inside' it. The southern wall now looks like a low enclosure wall; to the east, the façade of the building does not appear to be attached to the new structure.

Open questions notwithstanding, it is clear that a new building, or an attempted restoration of the old, has been constructed at the site of the destroyed Armenian church.

Cultural heritage sites in Azerbaijan, as in many other post-Soviet republics, are enshrined in extensive state inventories, which assign sequential numbers to individual monuments. St. Sargis was not included on the list of the state-protected cultural and archaeological monuments of AzSSR in 1968. ³  It appears on the Azerbaijan SSR's cultural monuments list only in 1988, when it was listed as an "Albanian temple" under inventory number 2883. ⁴  St. Sargis again appears on Azerbaijan's monuments list in 2001, once again as an "Albanian temple" under inventory number #232. ⁵ 

Albania here refers not to the modern state but to a medieval Christian kingdom that once ruled part of what is today Azerbaijan from the 2nd-8th centuries AD. St. Sargis, constructed almost 1000 years after the disappearance of Caucasian Albania, is an Armenian church, not an Albanian temple. But the government of Azerbaijan has repeatedly appropriated Armenian historic structures as Albanian in bureaucratic lists and state-sponsored polemical histories in order to sever their connection with the living descendant community of Armenians. The Albanian historical theories promoted by Azerbaijan's government have no credibility in the international community of historians or archaeologists and are widely dismissed as state-sponsored fiction.

The Khojavend region of Azerbaijan (Arm. Hadrut) has been an area of extensive construction since 2020, as Azerbaijan has laid down new roads leading to the city of Shusha. As many as 50% of the destroyed sites that CHW has documented to date are located in this one region. Apart from  St. Sargis Church  of Mokhrenes discussed here, destroyed sites include the  Mets Tagher Cemetery  and the historic  Makun  and  Halevor  bridges, which bore Armenian inscriptions. The map at right represents all of the destroyed, damaged, and threatened sites that CHW has documented to date. Further details can be found in our five monitoring  reports  and on our  dashboard .

CHW calls on Azerbaijan to inform the public about what has occurred in Mokhrenes/Susanlyg. The state must abide by the December 2021 ruling by investigating the destruction of St. Sargis and holding perpetrators accountable. Given the legal implication of the church's destruction, Azerbaijan must present its plans for St. Sargis, provide public on-the-ground documentation of the new construction, and permit journalists and experts access to the village to evaluate the work. If an attempt is being made to reassemble St. Sargis, Azerbaijan must demonstrate that, with the guidance of international experts in heritage conservation, it is faithfully rebuilding the demolished structure as an historic Armenian church. A hasty, secret restoration program cannot mitigate the legal and reputational fallout from the church's destruction. If, however, the work at the site is not a restoration program but rather an effort to put in place a new structure on the site of St. Sargis, Azerbaijan must cease construction until the site can be fully examined and assessed by independent investigations into both the destruction and the new activity. Azerbaijan is obligated to protect Armenian cultural heritage and prevent any effort to erase the centuries of Armenian cultural and religious life in Mokhrenes/Susanlyg.

 ¹  To learn more about St. Sargis of Mokhrenes, see  https://monumentwatch.org/en/monument/surb-sargis-church-of-mokhrenes/ 

 ²  ICJ  Order of December 7, 2021 .

 ³  Decision #140 of Azerbaijan SSR Council of Ministers dated April 2, 1968.

 ⁴  Decision #145 of Azerbaijan SSR Council of Ministers dated April 27, 1988.

 ⁵  Decision #132 of the Cabinet of Ministers of the Republic of Azerbaijan dated August 2, 2001.

 ⁶  Decision #1050 of the unrecognized Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh dated December 29, 2011.