When System Of A Down’s Serj Tankian released his philosophical memoir last month, we talked to him for a We’ve Got A File On You interview. At the end of the Q&A, he discussed his public request for Imagine Dragons to cancel their show in Azerbaijan last year, a request Imagine Dragons ignored. Tankian compared it to performing in Nazi Germany and concluded, “Anyone that does ethnic cleansing and genocide needs to be fucking punished. So that’s why I got pissed off. Some artists are artists and some artists are entertainers, and I’ll leave it at that.”

Now Tankian has offered further commentary on the issue in an interview with Metal Hammer, as pointed out by Metal Sucks. The main takeaway: “Fuck their art, they’re not good human beings, as far as I’m concerned.” Here’s more of what he said:

Look, I’m not a judge for people to tell bands where to play, or where not to play. You have other artists playing in very questionable kingdoms, run by one person, where people don’t have a lot of human rights, and I get that they’re doing it for money, that they’re artists, that they’re entertaining, all of that. But when there’s a government that’s about to commit ethnic cleansing, when Azerbaijan was starving the 120,000 Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, and not allowing any food or medicine in… you know, as an artist, if I found that out, there is no fucking 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.

If you are that blind to justice that you will go play a show in a country that’s starving another country, illegally, according to the International Court of Justice, according to what Amnesty International is saying, what Human Rights Watch is saying… If you still go and play 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 fuck. So that’s where I’m at with that. I have zero respect for those guys.

It’s not about my ego. I just wanted to make positive change. I wanted those guys to know that what they’re about to do is going to have bad repercussions. I was warning them for their own sake, for their own morality.

I’ve been warning different organizations against using Azerbaijan as a venue because, again, if you allow them to have international links in a way where they feel like they’re legitimate, they’re going to continue their bad behavior. You have a dictator who is doing ethnic cleansing, and he’s getting more contracts, Formula 1 racing and rock shows, then he’s going to think that it’s okay to kill people. That’s not okay. So you’ve got to break that link, you’ve got to let people know.

And here’s what Tankian told us last month:

Because proof is in the pudding. Anytime that there’s an economic blockade against such a country, that will affect it greatly. It makes a big difference. Divestment does make a huge difference. In a global economy, nobody wants to be isolated. No country wants to be isolated. No country leader wants an arrest warrant at the ICC, no matter how powerful they are, no matter how many weapons they have. Nobody wants to be isolated from the world community. And that is exactly why divestment sanctions make a big difference.

Azerbaijan attacked Armenia in 2020; they did an ethnic cleansing and a nine-month blockade that the UN’s International Court of Justice had to decree against it, asking them to open up the illegal blockade. They were trying to starve 120,000 people in their historic homelands for thousands of years.

And in September of last year, two weeks before Hamas’ attack, Israel and Azerbaijan attacked Armenians and ethnically cleansed them and left them as refugees. In Armenia, these people whose ancestors have lived there for thousands of years, left their homes, left everything, left the graves of their ancestors to a dictatorial regime in Baku. So knowing that, if a band or Formula 1 or COP29 decide to do their event there, then I guess it would have been cool to do such events in Nazi Germany. I guess it’s cool to do it in Russia now, why not? Why say it’s not OK to do it in one and OK to do it in the other? Anyone that does ethnic cleansing and genocide needs to be fucking punished. So that’s why I got pissed off. Some artists are artists and some artists are entertainers, and I’ll leave it at that.

Tankian recently released a solo single, “A.F. Day.” For more information on the Azerbaijan-Armenia conflict, here’s an Al Jazeera report.