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In Azerbaijan vandals destroyed the marble slab stationed on the entrance to the Jewish cemetery in Semaxi, as "Agency for Jewish News" - AEN (Агентство Еврейских Новостей) reports.

According to the publication, in November 2012 a stone fence was built around an ancient Jewish cemetery in Azerbaijani town Semaxi which was initiated and funded by International charity fund of mountain Jews STMEGI and its head, famous Jewish businessman and philanthropist German Zakharyaev. This fence solved a number of problems connected with the Jewish cemetery in Semaxi – it protected the place from pet walking, from accumulation of household waste as well as attempts of seizure of cemetery’s territory for building private residences.

AEN notes that on the entrance wall of the cemetery there was a black marble slab which received the main blows by anti-Semite vandals.

“We turned to the executive bodies of Semaxi and to local law enforcement agencies urging to conduct a thorough investigation of the act of vandalism on the Jewish cemetery and to find and punish those responsible,” said the head of the STMEGI fund in Azerbaijan Semen Ikhiilov.

According to the article the Jewish cemetery in Semaxi has a constructor hired by STMEGI fund who is in charge of controlling the situation across the cemetery’s perimeter, maintaining cleanness on its territory and preventing acts of vandalism (by calling the police), says Semen Ikhiilov. However for ensuring this the cemetery entrance must have a gatehouse where the guard could keep an inventory and hide from bad weather.

“The executive body of Semaxi has promised to provide the cemetery with such a lodge. Maybe after that the possibility of acts of vandalism on the cemetery will reduce,” noted Semen Ikhiilov.

In July Armenian blogger manmacloud draw the attention of the readers to the topic of “Vandalism on the Russian cemetery” in Azerbaijani forum Disput.az where the author spoke about a fact of intolerance that took place in Baku cemetery in “tolerant” Azerbaijan were the local vandals destroyed Russian tombstones. Other users of the forum told an analogous stories happening for many years in other cities of Azerbaijan, which makes it impossible to interpret these acts of deliberate anti-Russian vandalism as mere hooliganism of local teenagers.

Prior to that, in January 2010 on the cemetery located in Suraxani region of Baku several thousand tombstones were destroyed by unidentified people. In September 2007 under the pretext of construction of a new road in Baku they began demolishing graves in Narimanov (or Montin) cemetery where predominantly Armenians, Jews and Russians are buried. On LiveJournal.com website photographs were shared which clearly showed how cynically and brutally the graves of Armenians and other Christians were destroyed.