Russia has added a Ukrainian singer who won the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest to its wanted list, state news agencies reported on Monday.
According to reports, singer Susana Jamaladinova was wanted in an Interior Ministry database for violating a criminal law.
Independent news site Mediazona, which reports on opposition and human rights issues, said Jamaladinova was charged under a law passed last year that bans the spread of so-called fake information about the Russian military and ongoing fighting in Ukraine.
Jamaladinova, who performs under the stage name Jamala, is of Crimean Tatar descent. Jamala, who performed at the Kennedy Center Honors in December, won the 2016 Eurovision competition with the song “1944,” a title that refers to the year the Soviet Union deported Crimean Tatars en masse.
Jamala from Ukraine reacts after winning the Eurovision Song Contest final at the Ericsson Globe Arena in Stockholm, Sweden, May 14, 2016. TT News Agency/Maja Suslin/via Portal
Their victorious performance came almost exactly two years after Russia’s annexation of Crimea, when political unrest gripped Ukraine. Most other countries consider the annexation to be illegitimate.
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Russia protested the entry of “1944” into the contest, saying it violated rules against political statements at the Eurovision Song Contest. But the song made no specific criticism of Russia or the Soviet Union, although it did have such implications and began with the lyrics: “When strangers come, they come to your house, they kill you all and say ‘We’re not guilty.'”
Earlier this year, Jamaladinova spoke to the BBC about the release of her new folk album Qirim, saying it was her attempt to “give a strong voice to my homeland, Crimea.”
“The centuries of the Russian Empire, then the Soviet Union, now Russia – they did a lot of propaganda to silence us. Then they told the whole world that we didn’t exist. But we know the truth. I know the truth. And so. “So it’s really important for me to show that truth through the stories behind each of the songs on this album,” she told the BBC.
Just last week, a Russian court sentenced artist and musician Sasha Skochilenko to seven years in prison for swapping supermarket price tags with anti-war messages.
Skochilenko was arrested in her native St. Petersburg in April 2022 and charged with spreading false information about the military after she replaced price tags with ones condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
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