среда, 11 мая 2016 г.

Armenia threatened with Eurovision disqualification after breaking regional flag rule

Armenia threatened with Eurovision disqualification after breaking regional flag rule



Armenia’s Eurovision Song Contest entrant broke the controversial Eurovision Song Contest flag rule in spectacular fashion during the broadcast of the first Eurovision semi final. Waving a regional flag of the hotly disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region in the Green Room.
Image 1
Armenia’s Iveta Mukuchyan caused a stir with her Nagorno-Karabakh flag (Picture: Aftonbladet)


Armenia will be sanctioned by the managing committee of the Eurovision Song Contest in June and could face a financial penalty and retrospective points deduction. They have been threatened with disqualification and exclusion from the competition for a number of years if there are any further breaches of Eurovision Rules.
The waving of the Nagorno-Karabakh regional flag caused shock and anger in Azerbaijan and threatened the peaceful atmosphere of delegations, press and fans attending the Contest. Both Armenia and Azerbaijan qualified from the Eurovision Song Contest first semi final.

Last week the Eurovision Song Contest organisers announced a rule banning regional flags from being waved at the Eurovision Song Contest. Whilst fans were expected to adhere to this, no-one thought that a participant would breach the competition rule in such an obvious and inflammatory way.
Nargorno-Karabakh is at the centre of an unresolved dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The region has an Armenian majority population but lies within Azerbaijan’s borders. A war raged from 1988 until 1994 but a peace negotiation has never been achieved.

Eurovision organisers have been working hard to remove politics from the Eurovision Song Contest and keep the focus of the show and the competition firmly on music. Artists and delegations are expressly forbidden from using their songs or their participation for political means.
The rule made international headlines and became a topic of political discussion in the UK because it meant the Welsh flag would be banned from the arena. One half of the act representing the United Kingdom, Joe Woolford is Welsh.
The rule was relaxed for regions where the singers are from, however Armenia’s singer is actually from Germany.
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Azerbaijan’s singer Samra was faced with questions about the incident at her press conference after qualifying for the final (Picture: Aftonbladet)
A leaked memo, which included a list of flags that would be banned and placed the Welsh and Scottish flags on a list that included terror groups ISIS and Hamas, also caused outrage.
Armenian singer Iveta Mukuchayan poured oil on the fire in the Winners’ Press Conference after qualifying from last night’s Eurovision Semi Final. She said:
“I was expecting this question. You don’t have to forget that I am representing my country in my heart, my thoughts my feelings and all my emotions. My thoughts are with my motherland and what I want to spread is peace on borders. I wrote this song because this was going on inside of me”.
Azerbaijan were also participating in last night’s show and were sitting further along the press conference table as Iveta delivered her speech. You can see the looks on the Azeri faces here. The incident demanded immediate action from the European Broadcasting Union, organisers of the Eurovision Song Contest.
[Image 2] A strongly worded statement was forthcoming this afternoon:

The EBU's statement over Armenia

The EBU and the [Eurovision Song Contest] Reference Group, the governing body of the Eurovision Song Contest, strongly condemn the brandishing of the Nagorno-Karabakh flag in the Green Room during the live transmission of the first Semi Final on 10 May and considers the flag’s appearance in the transmission harmful to the Eurovision Song Contest brand.
The Reference Group has decided to sanction Armenian broadcaster, AMPTV, in accordance with the Rules. The nature of the sanction will be determined, at the latest, by the next Reference Group meeting in June.
We are acutely aware of the tense situation in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, and the on-going tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan. We consider the appearance of a flag of a highly disputed territory in the live transmission a serious breach of Rule 1.2.2h of the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest stating that “no messages promoting any organisation, institution, political cause or other, company, brand, products or services shall be allowed in the Shows”.
Furthermore, the EBU has imposed a zero-tolerance policy towards the Armenian delegation with regards to breaching the Rules of the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest, in particular in relation to the aforementioned incident.
The Reference Group wishes to point out that any further breach of the Rules of the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest could lead to disqualification from this year’s event or any successive editions.
In 2006, Icelandic entrant, the fictional character Silvia Night was threatened with disqualification if she used ‘the F word’ in the live performance of her song Congratulations.
In 2009, Georgia selected a song called We Don’t Wanna Put In, an obvious thinly veiled attack on Russian President Vladimir Putin.
If came soon after the conflict between Georgia and Russia. Eurovision organisers demanded that the lyrics should be changed or the song replaced. Georgia withdrew from the competition.
Also in 2009, police in Azerbaijan questioned 42 nationals who were found to have voted for Armenia at the Eurovision Song Contest. They were ‘invited to explain why they had done so’. Both countries have used the postcard videos introducing their songs to show contested land at the Contest before and both have been warned against it. This is the first time the flag of a disputed territory has been used at the Contest.
Yesterday, the Russian delegation were in hot water after a professional juror broadcast seven minutes of Monday’s jury voting semi final. The juror was sanctioned and her votes were disqualified. The broadcast angered the Netherlands and Armenian delegations because their performances were made available via the broadcast which then appeared on YouTube.

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