Following the release of the official Eurovision DVDs, fans have noticed that there were small changes made to the voting sequence.
Hataris protest
During the reveal of the televotes at the Grand Final, Hatari used their camera time to show their support for Palestine. When the votes were revealed, they held up Palestinian flags. After showing the flags, the camera quickly cut away from Hatari and the voting continued.
What has changed?
As Twitter user @kaeratari noticed, you only see this years logo and an Icelandic flag at the bottom right of the screen instead of Hataris original reaction to their televote points.
EBU regulations and rules
The censoring of Hatari comes as no surprise as EBU rules clearly forbid polticial statements. This includes several flags as they carry a political message. This can be seen in paragraph 2.6 of the EBU rules:
The ESC is a non-political event. All Participating Broadcasters, including the Host Broadcaster, shall ensure that all necessary steps are undertaken within in their respective Delegations and teams in order to make sure that the ESC shall in no case be politicized and/or instrumentalized. All Participating Broadcasters, including the Host Broadcaster, shall ensure that no organization, institution, political cause or other cause, company, brand, product or service shall be promoted, featured or mentioned directly or indirectly during the Event. No messages promoting any organization, institution, political cause or other, company, brand, products or services shall be allowed in the Shows and within any official ESC premises and/or event (i.e. at the venue, during the Opening Ceremony, the Eurovision village, the Press Centre, the Press Conferences, etc.). A breach of this rule may result in disqualification.
A similar incident occured in 2016, when Iveta Mukuchyan from Armenia held up a flag of the Nagorno-Karabakh region during the Semi-Final. The region between Armenia and Azerbaijan is the reason behind the conflict of these two countries, as they both claim it belongs to their country.
What do you think? Should the EBU have shown Hataris reaction as it was or was it right to censor it?
