{"id":167197,"date":"2012-03-07T13:16:21","date_gmt":"2012-03-07T09:16:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/?p=167197"},"modified":"2012-03-07T13:23:12","modified_gmt":"2012-03-07T09:23:12","slug":"armenia-officially-withdraws-from-eurovision-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/2012\/03\/07\/armenia-officially-withdraws-from-eurovision-2012.html","title":{"rendered":"Armenia Officially Withdraws from Eurovision 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today Armenian Public Television officially informed the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) of their withdrawal from the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest, reads a <span style=\"color: #000080;\"><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.eurovision.tv\/page\/news?id=48413&amp;_t=armenia_withdraws_from_eurovision_2012\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">statement<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/span> published on the official Eurovision website.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We are truly disappointed by the broadcaster&#8217;s decision to withdraw from this year&#8217;s Eurovision Song Contest,&#8221; said the Contest Executive Supervisor Jon Ola Sand on behalf of the EBU. &#8220;Despite the efforts of the EBU and the Host Broadcaster to ensure a smooth participation for the Armenian delegation in this year&#8217;s contest, circumstances beyond our control lead to this unfortunate decision.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Consequently, only 42 countries \u2014 instead of the 43 announced \u2014 will be represented at the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest in Baku, Azerbaijan. In each Semi-Final, 18 countries will be represented, whereas France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and host country Azerbaijan are automatically qualified for the Final.<\/p>\n<p>Recall, following news of the Feb. 23 death of Albert Adibekyan, who was serving in the army, a group of Armenian singers had issued a <span style=\"color: #000080;\"><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/en\/2012\/02\/24\/armenian-artists-refuse-to-participate-in-eurovision-in-baku.html\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">statement<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/span> saying they were boycotting the Eurovision Song Contest held in Baku this year and in a country that is \u201cknown for massacres and killings of Armenians\u201d and has snipers that kill Armenian soldiers, citing Adibekyan&#8217;s death as one of these instances. However, it <span style=\"color: #000080;\"><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/en\/2012\/03\/06\/armenian-soldier-shot-by-fellow-draftee-and-not-azerbaijani-sniper-defense-ministry.html\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">later became known<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/span> that Adibekyan died from a shot fired not by an Azerbaijani sniper but by a fellow conscript<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today Armenian Public Television officially informed the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) of their withdrawal from the&#8230;<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":167174,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[65942,29018,29019,19872,38444],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167197"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167197\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/167174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}