Douze Points For Peace The Eurovision Song Contest and Its Role in Processes of Transitional Justice Verka Serduchka performing ‘Dancing Lasha Tumbai’ for Ukraine, 2007 MA Thesis Lou-Anna Druyvesteyn – 11574100 1 July, 2018 Holocaust and Genocide Studies Universiteit van Amsterdam Supervisor: Dr. Karel Berkhoff Second reader: Prof. Dr. Nanci Adler Amount of words: 20.894 Table of content Abstract 3 Introduction 4 1. Transitional justice 6 1.1 The limited scope of transitional justice 6 1.2 Transitional justice in the former Yugoslavia 8 1.3 A broader scope 12 2. The Eurovision Song Contest 15 2.1 The beginnings: dreaming of unity 15 2.2 A dream come true? 16 2.3 The political side of the Eurovision 18 2.4 The case of Ukraine – Russia Goodbye! 22 2.5 Armenia – The struggle for recognition 26 3. Germany and Israel in the Eurovision 32 3.1 (West) Germany: to perform is to progress 32 3.2 Israeli participation – a celebration of the nation 36 3.3 A limited case study 39 4. (The former) Yugoslavia in the Eurovision Song Contest 41 4.1 Before 1992: unity without victory 41 4.2 The dissolution 43 4.3 A new chapter 46 4.4 Serbia: Changing the game 50 4.5 Your votes please 53 4.6 Why vote for each other? 56 Conclusion 58 Appendix A – Eurovision votes exchanged by Armenia, 60 Turkey and Azerbaijan from 2006-2012 Appendix B – Eurovision votes exchanged by Germany and Israel, 62 1973-2017 Appendix C – Eurovision votes exchanged by the countries of the 64 former Yugoslavia, 2004-2017 Bibliography 68 2 Abstract Cultural manifestations that can play a supportive role in transitional justice are rarely seen as such or properly evaluated. The Eurovision Song Contest is a good example: it is a mega event that is one of the most watched television shows in the world and therefore able to reach a mass audience for any message that is wished to be send. Officially it is not allowed to be political, but the contest is often implicitly full of political references. From songs and performances to voting, examples galore. This interplay between amusement, music and politics has potential in processes of reconciliation and restorative transitional justice after (violent) conflict or even genocides in Europe (the former Yugoslavia, Germany) or within the borders of the Eurovision Song Contest (Armenia). 3 Introduction Every year around late April and early May, the countries of Europe (and beyond) come together for a singing contest that has become one of the world’s most watched events in the history of television. The Eurovision Song Contest (or Eurovision) started with seven countries, an orchestra and a conductor, and grew into the biggest international musical competition with over forty countries participating every year from east to west.1 The Eurovision has seen Europe change from the broken continent it was shortly after the Second World War, the economic growth afterwards; the growing unity initiated by that other European initiative: the European Union; the wall dividing not only Germany but also East and West, and then coming down; to the subsequent fall of the Soviet Union and the expansion of the cultural and political concept that was ‘Europe’. The Cold War was played out, wars were fought, but the Eurovision Song Contest happened every year since 1956. The contest’s explicit denunciation of politics on stage has had little effect on the reality, for implicit political messages have been present on the stage from the early years of the contest. These messages – my personal favorite is Turkey’s submission to the contest a year after the oil crisis of 1979, a love song for a man named Pet’r Oil – are often in the context of a conflict or its aftermath. The stage of the Eurovision Song Contest provides the perfect venue to convey a message to or generate attention from a mass audience. In this thesis, the cases of Armenia, Germany, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia will be brought to the table to show how different sides to a conflict represent themselves variously at the Eurovision Song Contest in relation to their violent history. An analysis of these cases shows an opportunity for a mechanism of a more progressive approach to transitional justice by focusing on cultural elements and reconciliation, besides the judicial aspect of transitional justice. Research on the Eurovision Song Contest has mostly been focused on detecting voting patterns and blocs by means of statistical analysis by Derek Gatherer, Gad Yair and others. They have detected voting blocs based on cultural and linguistic affinities. The foundations for the Eurovision were not without political implications, and with the growth in participating countries came a growth in political dimensions to the festival.2 In the past few years, more research has been devoted to this by scholars such as Dean Vuletic, Catherine Baker, Marijana 1 Chris West, Eurovision! (London: Melville House, 2017): 4. 2 Anna Boulos, ‘Nil Points, Douze Points and Everything in Between: An Analysis of Political Voting Bias in the Eurovision Song Contest’, Master Thesis, Sanford School of Public Policy (2012), 38. 4 Mitrović and Ivan Raykoff. However, in relation to genocides and transitional justice, the Eurovision has been understudied. To demonstrate the relation between the Eurovision Song Contest and (cultural forms of) transitional justice, I elaborate on the ways in which the contest played a role in, or was a previous cultural manifestation of transitional justice, and how this can be used in future cases. My first point will be that the Eurovision Song Contest has had inherently, from the beginning onwards, political implications, whether it be on or off stage, especially in the validation of nations and states of their existence. I illustrate that side of the Eurovision Song Contest with the example of Ukraine, together with an elaboration on the voting systems. The latter can sometimes be a peculiar reflection of attitudes towards other participating countries. Following this, I show how the Eurovision Song Contest has been employed by Armenia as a cultural-institutional (coming from the broadcasters) initiative with regards to the Armenian Genocide. This case shows the side of the victims in a quest for demanding justice. Then I employ the case of Germany to show how in the early stages of the Eurovision, used this cultural event to distract from or deliberately create modifications of perceived stereotypes of perpetrators in the early stages of the Eurovision. This thesis will not analyze every entry of every participant of every year in this work, instead I will focus on the relevant years. And it goes without saying that not every entry is as political. There will always be enough songs merely about love, joy and happiness; here I have selected the ones that are politically charged. Finally – this will be the major part of this work – I discuss the case of the countries of the former Yugoslavia. I expand on the relations between these states and how these are strangely absent from the Eurovision stage. This will lead to the conclusion that mega events such as the Eurovision Song Contest, unintentionally serve as ideal venues for various manifestations of cultural transitional justice in multifold ways. 5 1. Transitional justice 1.1 The limited scope of transitional justice To end a violent conflict is often quite an achievement, yet conflict as such does not fully end. New issues arise: what to do with the perpetrators, the institutions and the judicial system? If these were part of the former conflict, they need to be adjusted. That is where transitional justice – as a (relatively) new field of study and practice – enters the stage to develop strategies on how to move forward in the most inclusive possible way.3 The first step of transitional justice is the criminalization of punishable acts that occurred, or retributive justice.4 Special courts or tribunals are then set up, because the judicial system in place is often not capable of handling the gravity, severity and multiplicity of the cases. When comparing the first case where transitional justice was implemented, the Nuremberg trials after the Second World War, to more recent cases, the shift in focus from perpetrator to victim becomes clearly visible.5 In the Military trials in Nuremberg, the focus on the victims was futile. That does not mean retributive justice should be discarded, it remains one of the cornerstones of transitional justice, because it shows (or intends to) a break with the previous regime, emphasizing the transformation to a post-conflict state.6 Transitional justice comes in all shapes and sizes; but its necessity – in any form – to a (post-) conflict society is by now widely recognized. Other components of transitional justice, next to – or instead of – criminal prosecution include truth-seeking and reforms. The truth- seeking aspect is especially important, as tribunals search for the truth in order to come to a just sentence. However, this truth is often not seen as the whole truth, since a court looks at the juridical aspects of the conflict only. This might (and should) be the truth, but it is not complete.7 Although it might not establish the entire truth, judicial truth does, as Michael Ignatieff has 3 Makau Mutua, ‘What is the Future of Transitional Justice,’ International Journal of Transitional Justice 1, no. 9 (March 2015): 4. 4 Rama Mani, ‘The Rule of Law or the Rule of Might? Restoring Legal Justice in the Aftermath of Conflict’, in Regeneration of Wartorn Societies, M. Pugh, ed. (London: Macmillan Press, 2000), 5 Rudi Teitel, ‘Transitional Justice Genealogy’, Harvard Human Rights Journal 16, no.