BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 31. Armenia, by destroying Azerbaijani cities during the period of occupation, was attempting to erase every trace of Azerbaijan’s culture, Chief Executive Director of Lagazetteaz.fr newspaper, founded by Trend News Agency in France, Jean-Michel Brun told Trend.
Brun personally visited Shusha and other places in Karabakh, thus seeing the destruction Armenia left behind.
“We can really see that all these places have been destroyed during the Armenian occupation and it is a pity. Because Shusha is a cultural capital of Azerbaijan, just like Rome in Italy or Paris in France and so it is very sad to see all these famous places, these monuments, these museums, these houses of culture completely destroyed,” he said.
Brun repeated that such destruction means that the Armenians wanted to erase every trace of Azerbaijan’s culture.
“Because had they left all this heritage, they cannot pretend that this land belonged to them and so of course they had to destroy everything,” he said.
Commenting on the future development of liberated territories, Brun pointed out two ways to revive these lands.
"This is a big question. It's about what kind of Karabakh or Shusha people would want to live in. Would it be the old Shusha, as it was before the occupation? The other option is to have a new Shusha, to make it a city looking into the future. Or maybe even somehow balance between the two," he said.
He also added that the culture of Caucasus and Azerbaijan in particular is very important for Europe.
“One of the major parts of French identity is the century and the philosophy of enlightenment. We always refer to this period of the French history but the philosophy of the enlightenment has been invented five centuries before the XVIII century, by Azerbaijani poet Nizami Ganjavi,” Brun said.
“Nizami Ganjavi highlighted the importance of woman in the society - something France lacked in the XVIII century.
"Nizami also highlighted the importance of preserving nature, the so-called sustainability. Thus, he was very advanced in his way of thinking and I think that it is very good example how the European and Azerbaijani cultures are linked,” he said.
Brun thus expressed the need to reconnect the French history to these roots.
“Because part of our own roots come from here, from this area. There are three great philosophers that had great influence on French philosophy: Farīd ud-Dīn Aṭṭār of Uzbekistan, Omar Khayyam of Persia and Nizami Ganjavi of Azerbaijan. It is very important to reconnect these philosophies,” he concluded.
Commenting on the activities of Armenian diaspora in France, Brun noted that Armenian diaspora is very rich and so a lot of money is being invested in media propaganda.
“We do what we can but if we had more possibilities we could be very efficient. We have to make documents, write books. Now I am writing a book about Shusha, which is supposed to be published before November, but we have to do more," he said.
Brun also expressed opinion that when image [of a country] is fake it cannot last.
“There is a moment that the truth becomes obvious. Recently we had elections in France and the right wings parties used the Karabakh conflict for their own political purpose. They tried to use the fact that Armenians are Christians and Azerbaijani are supported to be Muslim, which is ridiculous. They wanted to make the French people believe that in France there is also a conflict between Muslims and Christians, which is ridiculous as well,” he said.
