Last year, Serj Tankian called up Imagine Dragons for his planned concert in Azerbaijan. Now that the pop-rock band has gone ahead and played the show, the System of a Down singer says they're “not good human beings.”
Tankian had written an open letter to Imagine Dragons, asking them not to play games with Azerbaijan, accusing the country of “crimes against humanity” for its military actions that he described as an imminent “genocide.”
When asked about metal hammer Regarding his feelings after Imagine Dragona still played the concert in Baku, Azerbaijan, last September, Tankian responded: “I don't know these guys, but who are these people? I don't understand that kind of thinking. Very soon after, Azerbaijan attacked the people of Nagorno-Karabakh and 120,000 people left their historic homes.”
He continued: “Look, I'm not a judge for people telling bands where to play or where not to play. You have other artists playing in very questionable realms, run by one person, where people don't have many human rights, and I understand that they do it for money, that they are artists, that they are entertaining. , all of that. But when there is a government that is about to commit ethnic cleansing, when Azerbaijan was starving 120,000 Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh and not allowing food or medicine in… you know, as an artist, if I found out about that, there is no fucking reason. way I could have gone and played that show. But some artists do. And I don't know what to say about those artists. I don't respect them as human beings. Fuck their art, they're not good human beings, as far as I'm concerned.
Tankian concluded: “If you are so blind to justice, you are going to put on a show in a country that is starving another country, illegally, according to the International Court of Justice, according to what Amnesty International says, what Human Rights says Watch. … If you still Go and play in that country, I don't know what to say about you as a fucking human being. I don't even care about your music. If you're a bad human being, I don't give a damn. So that's where I am with that. “I have no respect for those guys.”
Tankian and System of a Down have been speaking out against Azerbaijan for a long time. In fact, they released their new first songs in 15 years back in 2020 in order to raise funds for the “serious war that Azerbaijan is perpetrating in our cultural homelands of Artsakh and Armenia.”
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