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Kazakhstan KAZAKHSTAN 2021 - not taking part

escYOUnited

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hijirio

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Kazakhstan's curse got ESC 2020 cancelled. Invite them in 2021 to get the curse lifted. What else should they do to prove themselves? Win JESC 10 times in a row with record breaking points?
 

CPV4931

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Preparing for our usual Off-season-discussion here :-)
 

JohnArg

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Mimmon

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Realest

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Mainshow

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There's no logical reasons left to not let Kazakhstan debut.
It's either underlying racism or financial issues...

They're party European, have sent delegations to the contest, are taking part in JESC, have been following the contest for decads now - the EBU were able to extend the EBU area back in the mid 2000's to let the Caucasus take part but when it comes to Kazakhstan, it's suddenly a huge problem. They are allowed to play football and any other sports with us Europeans but when it comes to a singing competition, we suddenly act bitchy abou it.

THERE are underlying and implicit, or at least, very discriminating tendencies within the EBU (and fanbase) towards Eastern European countries, for sure.

Let's take the running order determinded by the producers as an example, should we?:
Since 2014 (the year in which the running order gets decided by the producers), we've seen a total of 5 Eastern European countries getting the death slot (compared to only 2 Western European countries [Spain 2018, France 2015]). In other words, there's a 71,43% chance that a non-traditional Western European country gets the death slot (#2) in the Grand Final.
WHEREARS the best slot, "the last country to perform" is usually a Western country [2013 Ireland, 2014 United Kingdom, 2015 Italy, 2017 France, 2018 Italy, 2019 Spain]. 85,71% of all editions (in which the new running order got applied to), a Western European country has the chance to perform last. Usually, it's a Big 5 country, btw (71,43% whilst the Big 5 countries only equals 19,23% of all participants of the Grand Final) - That's simply unfair and highly discriminating and personally, I think it's caused by underlying racism. Who's the guys in charge? White Western/Northern Europeans - probably valueing Western styled music more than other genres, languages and singing styles...

Also, Australia - a country predominately inhabited by white people of Western European origin [up to 80-90% according to consensus I found online] gets invited to take part WHILST Kazakhstan doesn't - even though my points mentioned above.

I don't think that any of the EBU members consciously acts racist, though - it's more like they secretly favour non-Eastern European countries. Pretty sure that they will not wait an EFFING whole DECADE to let Scotland or Faroe Islands compete if they ever get independent.

Racism - as a term - might be controversial in this context but it is a fitting one.
There are many instances of racism which are underlying, implicit and undeniably, part of our upbringing,societies, education etc.
Systemic racism, for example, is the result of countless and unconscious decisions. Systemic racism is the underlying racism which is part of our society, a community or an institution which favors certain people, countries - in terms of EBU, I'd say "traditionally Western European participants/countries". It doesn't always equal in results but it can be/could have been seen in:
- the running order
- not letting Kazakhstan participate
- inviting Australia
- the Big 5 rule
- changing/altering the rules so that the German broadcaster can get away with their song choices in their national final
- banning Romania TWO WEEKS prior the actual contest
- enforcing a language rule and making English songs win most of the time

^^ Some of the points are "justified" in my opinion but they are all questionable because they adds to the favourism towards a certain group of countries within the EBU.

I know I'm very vocal about this and a strong supporter of Kazakhstan's debut but to me, it only makes sense to be happy about Kazakhstan's being neglected to debut if one also wants to get rid off Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan as well.
 
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Mimmon

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Its wild that in Junior Eurovison Kazakhstan have almost 356 songs submitted in last few days but they don't show the intrest for main Eurovison...Oh well.....
 

HayashiM

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There's no logical reasons left to not let Kazakhstan debut.
It's either underlying racism or financial issues...

They're party European, have sent delegations to the contest, are taking part in JESC, have been following the contest for decads now - the EBU were able to extend the EBU area back in the mid 2000's to let the Caucasus take part but when it comes to Kazakhstan, it's suddenly a huge problem. They are allowed to play football and any other sports with us Europeans but when it comes to a singing competition, we suddenly act bitchy abou it.

THERE are underlying and implicit, or at least, very discriminating tendencies within the EBU (and fanbase) towards Eastern European countries, for sure.

Let's take the running order determinded by the producers as an example, should we?:
Since 2014 (the year in which the running order gets decided by the producers), we've seen a total of 5 Eastern European countries getting the death slot (compared to only 2 Western European countries [Spain 2018, France 2015]). In other words, there's a 71,43% chance that a non-traditional Western European country gets the death slot (#2) in the Grand Final.
WHEREARS the best slot, "the last country to perform" is usually a Western country [2013 Ireland, 2014 United Kingdom, 2015 Italy, 2017 France, 2018 Italy, 2019 Spain]. 85,71% of all editions (in which the new running order got applied to), a Western European country has the chance to perform last. Usually, it's a Big 5 country, btw (71,43% whilst the Big 5 countries only equals 19,23% of all participants of the Grand Final) - That's simply unfair and highly discriminating and personally, I think it's caused by underlying racism. Who's the guys in charge? White Western/Northern Europeans - probably valueing Western styled music more than other genres, languages and singing styles...

Also, Australia - a country predominately inhabited by white people of Western European origin [up to 80-90% according to consensus I found online] gets invited to take part WHILST Kazakhstan doesn't - even though my points mentioned above.

I don't think that any of the EBU members consciously acts racist, though - it's more like they secretly favour non-Eastern European countries. Pretty sure that they will not wait an EFFING whole DECADE to let Scotland or Faroe Islands compete if they ever get independent.

Racism - as a term - might be controversial in this context but it is a fitting one.
There are many instances of racism which are underlying, implicit and undeniably, part of our upbringing,societies, education etc.
Systemic racism, for example, is the result of countless and unconscious decisions. Systemic racism is the underlying racism which is part of our society, a community or an institution which favors certain people, countries - in terms of EBU, I'd say "traditionally Western European participants/countries". It doesn't always equal in results but it can be/could have been seen in:
- the running order
- not letting Kazakhstan participate
- inviting Australia
- the Big 5 rule
- changing/altering the rules so that the German broadcaster can get away with their song choices in their national final
- banning Romania TWO WEEKS prior the actual contest
- enforcing a language rule and making English songs win most of the time

^^ Some of the points are "justified" in my opinion but they are all questionable because they adds to the favourism towards a certain group of countries within the EBU.

I know I'm very vocal about this and a strong supporter of Kazakhstan's debut but to me, it only makes sense to be happy about Kazakhstan's being neglected to debut if one also wants to get rid off Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan as well.

I think 'racist' is still a bit disputable word in this context. But I agree with you that not letting Kazakhstan participate (all the while there's no issue in letting it compete in the JESC) is unfair and discriminatory - and that is what matters.

In addition to your list, we've only had two winners from Eastern Europe in the past 10 years (2011, 2016). I don't mean to say that this fact somehow results from EBU's actions or is in itself unfair. However it is proof that any fear of 'potentially strenghtening the Eastern blockvote' is ridiculous at this point.
 
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DenizESC

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inviting Australia (which is so yolo) and doing everything to prevent a Kazakh debut (which is a country with actual European ground remember) is a big wtf moment, it's not something I will ever stand for tbh because there is literally just no justified reason to prevent them from entering, just because they are more ethnically asian and less white I guess, they are being discriminated, I see 0.00 other reason. It's racist. EBU enter the 21st century pls.

Eastern Europe is also being at least somewhat discriminated the last decade, def agree with that.
 

Gera11

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This is a really stupid move on EBU's part. They come with messages like "Eurovision will come back stronger than ever" and others like that, really just empty promises and a blatant double-standard. Kazakhstan is obviously very interested in joining the main contest, look how much effort they put into JESC. I suppose an addition to Sweden's bootlicker bloc is the only criteria for new countries to join. I am so glad Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia joined in the late 2000s because the current administration would probably deem them too as not European enough for their standards.

Kazakhstan has such a great potential, bringing something original to the contest. Their music industry is the bomb tbh
 

Daybreak

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On one hand I'd like to welcome Kazakhstan to Eurovision, I'm sure they have an exciting culture and music that could enrich the contest and they are sort of in Europe. On the other hand, and I'm surprised it hasn't come up in this thread yet, it's common for a certain type of authoritarian countries (the ones that have lots of oil/gas/etc money to spend, or rather the governments have because obviously the regular people hardly see any of that wealth) to use big international events and in particular hosting them for good PR, to legitimize the government and to make the world forget or overlook the human rights violations and them being a dictatorship.

It mostly involves sporting events (especially since the democratic countries often don't have the public support for spending taxpayer money due to the increasing cost of those) like China and Russia hosting the Olympics, the Russian World Cup, Azerbaijani European Games and all three countries' Formula 1 races, but Azerbaijan and Russia have also treated their Eurovision participation and hosting this way - and since Kazakhstan fits this profile and they've already bid for the Winter Olympics, I'm certain they'd use Eurovision for that purpose. So while I would be all for them entering if they were at least more-or-less democratic, and I'm not ruling out some bias on the side of the EBU, I'd prefer missing out on an interesting new country in ESC to voluntarily giving them this platform to legitimize their oppressive regime.
 

tuorem

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I totally disagree with the "not suitable government" argument being a valid reason to leave Kazakhstan on the side. It's Eurovision, not the International Court of Justice. They are partly on the European continent, they are interested, they take part in JESC, so that should be enough to examine their application with attention. The contest is meant to gather and unite Europe, not select who's more legitimate to be in by rule of thumb imo. Not that I don't care about human rights, but it's off-topic here, like in the international sports events.

If the EBU were to accept "democratic" countries only, we'd have a grand final with ten countries at best. Apparently, it's not what bothers the EBU anyway, since they're still glad to have one more participant in JESC. And who would they be to judge countries anyway? It's not their job.

All that constant talk of inclusiveness for several years was BS from the start. And don't get me started on equal treatment of participating nations, the EBU loves their double, triple standards. We've had numerous examples with the cultural bias and shady patterns that @Mainshow explained above, the case of San Marino not being heard, the change of rules decided by a small group, Morocco being informed of the changes while most Eastern European countries weren't...

Now they can only say they "have no plan" of inviting Kazakhs because there isn't any solid justification to issue now that they are in JESC and Australia takes part: either allow Kazakhstan to debut in Eurovision or remove them (and Australians) from all contests. The current situation is just wonky and shows the EBU's true colours (although we knew already).
 
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