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The winner of Eurovision in 2016 Jamala is today a refugee – “We saw a rocket in front of our eyes”

Six years ago, Ukrainian singer Jamala conquers Europe with a song about Stalin’s expulsion of Crimean Tatars in 1944. “When strangers come, they come to your homes. They kill you all and say “We are not guilty” “, she sang her song that gave an unexpected victory to Jamala in 2016 in her international song contest Eurovisionwhere songs with lighter content are usually included.

Today, Jamala is also a refugee after the Russian invasion of her country, which forced her and her children to seek refuge outside Ukraine.

“On February 24, my husband woke me up and told me that the war had started and that Russia had attacked us. At that moment I was shocked. “It looked like a nightmare,” she told Reuters in Istanbul, according to the Athens News Agency.

The 38-year-old, whose real name is Susanna Jamaladinov, hid in a shelter in Kiev before fleeing to Turkey with her two children, but her husband stayed back in Ukraine to fight the Russian army.

The journey of escape was not easy and she sang to her children to disorient them from danger.

“I was lost, but I had to move on. It was scary”

“We were in the car and we heard the noise. “We saw a rocket in front of our eyes,” she said, describing her confusion about whether she should continue the journey or go back. “I was lost, but I had to move on. It was scary”.

Jamala, a Tatar of Crimean descent whose relatives were the victims of the 1944 deportations, appealed to Europeans to rally behind her country.

“It’s not just Ukrainian war, is a war against European values. “I think we are all in the same difficult position,” she said.

She sent this message earlier this month in Berlin, where she performed her 2016 song again in a preliminary round of this year’s Eurovision – this time to support the Ukrainian army.

Russia, which describes its attack on Ukraine as a “special military operation”, has been ruled out of this year’s event.

One of the favorites for the Eurovision final, which has a huge global television audience, is the Ukrainian band Kalush Orchestra.

Although its members are active outside the western part of the country, which has been less affected by the three-week-old war, they have had to rehearse separately while performing their duties during this wartime period.

The leader of the group, Oleh Psyuk, leads a group of 20 volunteers, who supply medicine and help people escape the war. His partner makes Molotov cocktails and another member of the group serves in a unit defending his homeland.

For Jamala, who was initially reluctant to sing her songs while her country was at war, the doubts disappeared as soon as she started singing: “It seems to me that now I can do that. “If I can sing and raise money for Ukraine, I will continue to do so.”

Source: News Beast

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