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Armenian citizen posts petition to recount Eurovision-2016 results

The petition says Eurovision fans do not agree with the results of this year’s contest won by Ukrainian singer Jamala with a controversial song about the deportation of Crimean Tatars in 1944

MOSCOW, May 17. /TASS/. More than 210,000 people have already signed an online petition demanding the European Broadcasting Union to recount the results of the Eurovision-2016 song contest.

The petition ‘Make Eurovision Song Contest revise the results of the song contest 2016’ was submitted two days ago by Arthur Hovhannisyan, from the Armenian capital, Yerevan.

The petition says Eurovision fans do not agree with the results of this year’s contest won by Ukrainian singer Jamala with a controversial song about the deportation of Crimean Tatars in 1944.

Australian and Russian entries got the second and third places respectively.

This year Eurovision organizers changed the balloting system, ranking the entries by both a poll of TV viewers and a five-member jury in each participating country. Russia’s Sergei Lazarev, who was the favorite of bookmakers, ranked first in the popular vote and fifth in the jury vote.

"We understand that jury voting and televoting process is a hard and emotional one, but the amount of people having signed this shows how many people are sure that this year's ‘winner’ is not the one who should really win the contest," the petition says. "We have no doubt on the justice and privacy of contest that's why we think that there's need to revise the results."

Petitions published at change.org are not legally binding and the European Broadcasting Union has the right not to consider the address.