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System Singer Visits Congressman’s Office To Push Genocide Bill
09.28.2005

Band, meanwhile, is about to shoot a video for ‘Hypnotize.’

Singer Serj Tankian had some personal business to attend to this week
before System of a Down could shoot their next video. Personal and,
well, global.

Before the band left for the second leg of its fall tour with the Mars
Volta (see “System Of A Down/ Mars Volta Tour Dates Announced”),
Tankian promised his 97-year-old grandfather he would do his best to
convince Congressman Dennis Hastert (R-Illinois) to bring the Armenian
Genocide Resolution to a vote, an issue long close to System of a Down
(see “System Of A Down Make The Political Personal At Souls
2005”). 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 Bill] 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.”

Hastert was not at his office Tuesday and was unavailable for comment
Wednesday (September 28).