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Post by Admin on May 15, 2016 19:06:05 GMT
Ukrainian singer Jamala's song about Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's 1944 deportation of the Crimean Tatars has been crowned the winner of this year's Eurovision Song Contest. The 32-year-old singer made a plea for "peace and love" as she collected her trophy after beating Australia - which competed for the second time after appearing as a guest last year - into second place and Russia into third.  Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko hailed Jamala's "unbelievable" victory with her song about Russian-annexed Crimea. "Yes!!!" Poroshenko tweeted. "An unbelievable performance and victory! All of Ukraine gives you its heartfelt thanks, Jamala."  Jamala is a member of the Muslim Tatar minority of Crimea who saw her great-grandmother deported along with 240,000 others by Stalin in the penultimate year of World War II.  Russia had earlier protested Ukraine's entry in the contest because of its "political" subtext - a violation of the contest's rules. But Eurovision ruled that Jamala was "historical" in nature and allowed her song to compete.  |
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Post by Admin on May 16, 2016 18:55:15 GMT
 Russian officials have suggested the country could boycott the next Eurovision song contest over what they see as the politically-motivated victory of Ukraine’s entry “1944”. The winning song was a slow-paced ballad by Jamala, a 27-year-old Crimean Tatar, and Ukraine said its title and lyrics referred to the ethnic cleansing of her people under the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. Russia, whose own entrant Sergey Lazarev went into the competition as the bookmakers' favourite, had tried to get Ukraine’s song banned from the competition, describing it as a clear political statement over the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and as such a violation of the contest’s rules.  Ukraine was trailing Russia based on public votes alone – a fact not lost on Russian media – but won with 534 points once the decisions of each nation’s expert jury had been taken into account. Australia came second with 511, while Russia had to settle for third. |
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Post by Admin on May 19, 2016 19:00:05 GMT
 The Russian MP Yelena Drapeko blamed Lazarev’s failure to win on the “information war against Russia” and the “general demonisation” of the country. She told the TASS news agency: “We are talking about… how everything with us is bad, how our athletes are all doping, our planes are violating airspace – all of this, of course, shows [in the Eurovision result].” And Alexey Pushkov, the head of the State Dumas Foreign Affairs Committee, wrote on Twitter that the result showed Eurovision had “turned into a place for political battles”.  He suggested Russia should sing next about the “martyrs of Odessa”, a reference to the pro-Russian separatists who died in clashes with Ukrainian government supporters in May 2014.  But the result was wildly celebrated in Ukraine itself, where people hailed the spotlight on Stalin’s brutal treatment of Crimean Tatars – including Jamala’s own great-grandmother.  In the space of three days in May 1944, all 200,000 Tatars, who then made up a third of Crimea's population, were put on trains and shipped off to Central Asia on Stalin's orders. Thousands died during the gruelling journey, or starved to death upon arrival in the hostile terrain. "This song is about our tragedy ... and I hope that people heard this," said Emine Ziyatdinova, a 27-year-old Crimean Tatar who was among those celebrating the win at a Tatar restaurant in Kiev. |
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