The deportation of Crimean Tatars was ordered by Communist leader Joseph Stalin during the Soviet era, accusing them of collaborating with the Nazi Germany. “I was sure that if you talk about truth it really can touch people”.
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“This pain speaks to all the people who have experienced their own tragedies in the past, such as (the) Holocaust”, she added.
Jamala overtook the bookmakers’ favourites, Russian Federation and Australia, to win the normally light-hearted contest with the song “1944” with references to Crimea, Stalin and claims of ethnic cleansing.
Jamala’s entry – which stirred controversy over criticism of Russia’s recent annexation of Crimea – scored 534 points, closely followed by Australia’s Dami Im with 511 points, the juries’ favorite. In 2008, just a few months before a brief military clash between Georgia and Russia, Georgia submitted a song called We Don’t Wanna Put In, an intended pun on the name of Russian president Vladimir Putin.
“Jamala you did your best and even more!” “Yes!” Mr. Poroshenko tweeted.
And Kiev Mayor Vitali Klitschko – a former boxer who strongly backs Ukraine’s new shift toward the West – said he never doubted Jamala’s victory because she was “genuine”.
“I don’t think that there was any intention by Jamala to bring it to a political level”, she told the BBC. Despite rumors that the song might be disqualified because of its political overtones, the Eurovision Song Contest Reference Group cleared it for the competition, claiming that neither the title nor the lyrics contained political speech.
With Ukraine’s win, the Eurovision crown remains safely within Europe.
“This is partly a outcome of the propaganda war of information that is being waged against Russia”, said Russian MP Elena Drapeko.
Ukrainian singer Jamala overtook the bookmakers’ favorites, Russian Federation and Australia, to win the usually lighthearted contest with the song “1944”, about the wartime deportations of ethnic Tatars from Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
Thus, “Eurovision” will be held in Ukraine next year.
Yet “1944” was not a patriotic song, she insisted, adding that the Eurovision “has always had a somewhat political character” simply because so many countries were competing on the same stage.
Donny Montell of Lithuania performs during the first dress rehearsal for the Eurovision Song Contest final in Stockholm, Sweden, Friday, May 13, 2016.
The official Rossiya 24 news channel says “TV viewers gave Russian Federation victory”, but alleges that the new voting rules “allowed the competition organisers to amend the results as they saw fit”.
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Russian Federation had earlier protested Ukraine’s entry in the contest because of its “political” subtext – a violation of the contest’s rules.
