Swedish singer wears Palestinian scarf on Eurovision stage despite ban | RTL News

Saade is not this year’s Swedish entry, but he performed as the opening act at the start of the first semi-final.

The organizer, European Broadcasting Union, is not happy with the action, because showing Palestinian flags or other symbols is prohibited: “It is a live program. Everyone who performs is aware of the rules and we regret that Eric Saade has chosen.”

The organization has also not posted the Swedish performance on its channels. This makes it the only performance from last night that was not shared there.

Here you can see moving images of the performance:

The organization managed to prevent Irish participant Bambie Thug from making a political statement on stage. The artist had written a message on her body. Written in the Irish Ogham alphabet were ‘Ceasefire’ and ‘Freedom for Palestine’. That had to be removed.

Justice and peace

“It was very important to me because I am for justice and peace,” Thug said at a press conference after the first semi-final. “I unfortunately had to change the message today at the direction of the EBU to just ‘Crown the Witch’.”

Thug qualified for Saturday’s final.

There is a lot of buzz in this edition about political statements because of the war in Gaza between Hamas and Israel. Earlier, a group of Dutch people called on Dutch participant Joost Klein to boycott the festival. Israel’s song had to be changed because the lyrics contained some political messages.