This debate is a few months old, but I thought the roster and content of this blog was perfect to revive a topic that in the United States gets the attention that it truly deserves: zero.
Last May, Columbia University's Duncan J. Watts wrote this interesting Op-Ed on political bloc-voting in the annual Eurovision contest. Serbia had just won the contest, receiving most of its votes from Former Yugoslavia republics. And England got trounced, in another supposed demonstration of anti-British sentiment and the buoyancy of ethnonationalism in Europe in the 21st century.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/22/opinion/22watts.html
I wrote this in response: Mr. Watts is not alone in suggesting a political bias in the Eurovision contest. British and German tabloids also cried foul, and the British Parliament debated (!) this question. They couldn't be more wrong. It is true that voting patterns over the years show some recognizable voting blocs, but this is more due to geographic proximity and cultural affinities -similar languages, similar tastes- than the reflection of political alignments within Europe. There is no anti-Western or anti-British bias. Contrary to Mr. Watt's assertion that "no one votes for Britain," the United Kingdom is the country that has received the most votes overall in the history of this contest. The politics of Eurovision have more to do with other issues, such as the exclusion of Serbia for several years or the reaction in Arab countries to the inclusion of Israel, than with Western European countries having one bad year.
Having said this, did Marija Serifovic ever explain what she meant by giving the three-fingered salute to the cameras when she received 12 points from Bosnia?
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There are two possible answers on your question:
1. Three-fingered salute is a traditional salute in Serbia (first time widely used on the Serbian oppositon relly against Slobodan Milosevic on March 9-th, 1991). It was a symbol against the war and for democracy. Unfortunatelly, Mr. Milosevic managed to convince other members of the former unified Yugoslavian presidency that the use of force by the former Yugoslav Army was a necessary step to restore the peace in Belgrade.
2. The other answer is that Ms. Serifovic (who belongs to Romani national group) used the three-fingered symbol to salute the Bosnian Serbs population knowing that they live in the country in which they do not feel to belong.
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