Displacement, erasure and a 5-star tour: Inside Artsakh’s Christian heritage crisis

Then, only a few years later, tourists are invited into the same places you were forced to leave. They are shown the scenery, architecture, and historic sites. Yet they hear little about you, your community, or the Christian faith that shaped the land for centuries.

That is the moral problem now confronting Artsakh, the ancient Armenian Christian region also known internationally as Nagorno-Karabakh.

Armenia was the first nation to adopt Christianity as its state religion. Armenian Christians sustained a profound spiritual and cultural presence in Artsakh for centuries. Its churches and monasteries were not merely historic structures. They were living places of worship. Its cemeteries bore witness to generations of Christian families who lived, prayed, raised children, and were laid to rest there.

Following Azerbaijan’s September 2023 military offensive, more than 100,000 ethnic Armenians fled Nagorno-Karabakh for Armenia. They left behind homes, communities, churches, monasteries, cemeteries, and a Christian heritage inseparable from the people who preserved it. The International Court of Justice subsequently ordered Azerbaijan to ensure that those who wished to return could do so safely and without obstruction.

The people left, but their heritage did not.

Credible researchers have documented the destruction, damage, and alteration of Armenian cultural and religious sites in the region. Churches, monasteries, cemeteries, and monuments are not simply remnants of a distant political conflict. They are physical testimony to centuries of Christian presence. They also testify to a people whose connection to that land cannot simply be edited out of history.

A church is more than architecture. A monastery holds the prayers and spiritual memory of generations. A cemetery tells us who lived, worshiped, suffered, and died there.

Christians should be troubled by what is happening next.

The same places from which Armenians were displaced are now being marketed as tourist destinations.

Marriott Bonvoy Tours & Activities recently promoted a tour through the region, including Shushi and Stepanakert. The listing used the Azerbaijani names Shusha and Khankendi. The tour emphasized scenery, architecture, cultural attractions, and historic sites while offering little meaningful context about the displacement of the Armenian population or the Armenian Christian heritage embedded in the places being visited.

Following public criticism, Marriott Bonvoy Tours & Activities removed the listing. The company deserves credit for responding. However, the larger problem did not disappear with a single tour.

A recent review published by Save Armenia, the organization I lead, found similar offerings promoted through Expedia, Travelocity, Viator, a Tripadvisor company, and GetYourGuide. Although the itineraries vary, the pattern is concerning. Travelers are invited to encounter landscapes, architecture, history, and culture with little or no meaningful explanation of the Armenian Christians who lived there, worshiped there, and preserved those sacred sites for generations.

Tourism itself is not the enemy. At its best, travel broadens our understanding of other people and cultures. It can help us see the world more honestly, especially when it introduces us to histories and experiences beyond our own.

However, tourism becomes something else when history is selectively presented.

No one can honestly market a church while erasing the Christians who worshiped there. No one can promote sacred sites while churches, monasteries, and cemeteries belonging to the people who built them are being destroyed, damaged, or erased. And no one should invite tourists into communities from which an entire population was forcibly removed while failing to tell them what happened to the people who lived there.

This is not merely a dispute about place names, politics, or competing national narratives. It is a question of truth, memory, and the Christian responsibility to remember those whose suffering has faded from public attention.

Scripture tells us to “remember those in prison as if you were together with them” and to “speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves.” Those commands do not become optional because a persecuted or displaced Christian community is geographically distant, politically inconvenient, or no longer dominating the headlines.

We do not have to resolve every geopolitical question surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh to recognize a basic moral truth. A people’s churches, monasteries, cemeteries, and sacred history cannot be separated from the people who built, protected, and worshiped in them.

The Armenian Christians of Artsakh should not become an exception to our concern for persecuted and displaced believers.

Marriott’s decision to remove its listing shows that travel companies can listen and act. Expedia, Travelocity, Viator, GetYourGuide, and the wider travel industry should establish clear standards for tourism in regions affected by recent conflict, mass displacement, and endangered religious heritage.

At a minimum, travelers deserve honest context. They deserve to know not simply what they are seeing, but whose history they are encountering. They also deserve to know whose story they may be invited to overlook.

The responsibility does not belong to corporations alone.

Christians must decide whether our concern for suffering believers is real enough to extend beyond the causes that dominate the news cycle. Will we remember our displaced Armenian brothers and sisters while their heritage can still be protected? Or will we wait until their history has been reduced to scenery?