SERJ TANKIAN VISITS CONGRESS
artist: system of a down
date: 09/29/2005
category: general music news

Ultimate-Guitar.Com
Sept 29 2005

System Of A Down singer visits Congressman’s office to push Genocide
Bill, as he tries to push for more of a global object and takes a
brake from the tour. He goes on the political path to try and loby
for changes in the Genocide Bill.

Tankian promised his 97-year-old grandfather he would do his best to
convince Congressman Dennis Hastert to bring the Armenian Genocide
Resolution to a vote, an issue long close to System Of A Down. And
he did just that Tuesday outside the Speaker of the House’s Batavia,
Illinois, office.

Tankian joined members of the Armenian National Committee of America,
the Armenian Youth Federation and his own Axis Of Justice organization
in a rally and then read a heartfelt letter he delivered to Hastert’s
office in support of the pending legislation, which would officially
recognize Turkey’s slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians between 1915
and 1923.

With the resolution, which overwhelmingly passed the bipartisan
International Relations Committee, Hastert can either bring it to
the House of Representatives for a vote or let it expire.

“It’s all in his hands, he’s the man,” Tankian said of Hastert, who
spoke in support of recognizing the genocide on the House floor in
1994. “The thing is that a similar resolution was going around in
2000 as well and he was the speaker of the House then, but at the
time President Clinton had written a letter asking him not to bring
it up to vote, citing concerns that had to do with Turkey. In 2004
he also had the opportunity to bring another resolution to vote on …

and that didn’t happen either.

“I’m sure that there’s a lot of lobbying going on from the Bush
administration, from the military-industrial complex that sells a lot
of weapons to Turkey, and a whole host of corporate lobbyist firms
that don’t want this thing to pass, but the truth has to come out,
and more so in a democracy than anywhere else,” he continued. “So
we’re fighting the good fight.”