Destruction of Historical Memory: Destruction of Shrines and Necropolises

ID Name
T0045.001 Destruction of Shrines and Necropolises
T0045.002 Burning of Books and Archives

Aggressors may destroy shrines and necropolises: burn and demolish churches and mosques, raze holy places, turn gravestones into building material. A blow at the places of prayer and memory strikes at the community's very ability to remain itself. This is prohibited by the Hague Regulations (Article 27), the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property and the Rome Statute (Article 8(2)(b)(ix)) - the very charge on which the International Criminal Court delivered its first conviction for the destruction of cultural objects (the Al Mahdi case on Timbuktu, 2016).

ID: T0045.001
Sub-technique of:  T0045
Tactic: Persistence
People: Nokhchi (Chechens)
Contributors: decolonial.ist project
Version: 1.1
Created: 6 August 2026
Last Modified: 9 August 2026

Procedures Carried Out


February 1943
C1180 Operation "Chechevitsa": the Total Deportation of the Chechen People and the Special Settlement Regime (1943-1949)
G0010 USSR
S0017 Secret Police and Security Services

The colonizer ravaged the shrines and graves of the deported Chechens. Historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write: "...on the orders of the party-soviet organs even mosques and cemeteries were plundered... The grave churts (stones) went into the foundations of factories and livestock farms; they were used to pave city streets and edge sidewalks"[1]. The colonizer destroyed the city mosque of Grozny[1].

References