Serj Tankian calls for Imagine Dragons to cancel Azerbaijan show

Serj Tankian, the longtime frontman of System Of a Down and a staunch human rights activist, has long spoken out in support of Armenia over the course of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, a brutal and decades-spanning territorial dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan. In a Wednesday, August 16 Instagram post, Tankian claimed he’d reached out to Imagine Dragons months ago when he learned of their planned performance in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, asking the wildly successful group to call off the concert in protest of the Azerbaijani government’s documented human rights abuses.

“I was sure they were unaware that Azerbaijan’s petro-oligarchic dictatorial regime was starving 120k people in Nagorno-Karabagh which is now being called a Genocide by the former prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno Ocampo,” Tankian wrote. “So through representatives, I sent them a kind letter urging them to reconsider playing their show in Azerbaijan as it would help whitewash the dictatorial regime’s image there. I included various articles including one by Amnesty Int’l who I was told they have worked with in the past. There was no response. No answer, no response.” See the full post below.

System Of A Down released “Protect The Land” and “Genocidal Humanoidz” in 2020, their first new music in 15 years. “We’re probably the only rock band that has governments as enemies, the only rock band that’s at war, so I wrote these songs to boost the morale of our troops and Armenians around the world,” wrote guitarist Dan Malkanian at the time.

Imagine Dragons embarked on a tour of Europe and West Asia last week. Four days before their planned performance in Baku, they’re scheduled to play in Tel Aviv, Israel, a concert that’s being protested by the Palestinian-led movement Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS). A representative for the band did not immediately respond to The FADER’s request for comment.