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Serj Tankian Visits Congress

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  • Serj Tankian Visits Congress

    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."
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