Ukrainian former Eurovision winner Jamala wanted by Russian justice | Music

Forty-year-old Jamala, who is of Crimean Tatar descent, won the Eurovision Song Contest in Stockholm with 1944. The song refers to the time when Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin had approximately 200,000 Crimean Tatars deported to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, among others. According to Stalin, the population group had collaborated with the occupiers from Nazi Germany.

Jamala’s great-grandmother lived in Crimea in 1944. The woman was deported from Ukraine with her sons and transferred to Central Asia.

The remaining Crimean Tatars in Crimea are said to continue to be persecuted on the peninsula, which has been back under Russian rule since 2014.

Jamala performed at the final of the Eurovision Song Contest in Liverpool earlier this year. Last year she was in the Netherlands for the Great Eurovision Song Contest in the Ziggo Dome.