Armenia’s entrant in Eurovision 2016, took to social media her disappointment over being included, and then excluded from the German selection for 2021, and stated that the reason for that is her waving the Nagorno-Karabakh flag at the Stockholm Contest. The German national broadcaster NDR made a statement, in which they deny Iveta’s accusations of anything political going on behind their decision to exclude her from the selection.

Iveta took her disappointment to the social media, and made the following accusation:

I knew how unpleasant it was for millions of viewers at the Eurovision back in 2016 to engage a few minutes into the discussion about why I put up the Kharabagh flag in a contest that doesn’t want to be involved in politics. What many people don’t know is that this year I got an excited call from Germany that 200 experts voted, without me knowing about it, to discuss me representing Germany at the Eurovision 2021. Everybody was excited, me as well. Then I got a call that the press-department said unfortunately the decision came out as rejection, which most likely points to my political move from 2016 by raising awareness about the attack on Kharabagh.

NDR has once again teamed up with DIGAME in order to find the German entry for the 2021 Eurovision Song Contest. The first rule was that artists who have participated at the Song Contest representing a different country, would not be included in the selection process. No political statements of any sorts were taken into consideration for any of the artists. NDR made the following statement to our colleagues at the German Eurovision portal ESC Kompakt:

For the selection process, DIGAME and the NDR have agreed that Germany should not be represented at the ESC by artists who have already participated in the international competition for another country. Iveta Mukuchyan was mistakenly included in the first selection for 2021 and contacted by DIGAME. With the sole reason that she had already participated in the ESC for Armenia, she was then canceled by DIGAME for the further course of the selection. There was no other reason or a separate agreement with the NDR. Political statements played no role.

Armenia failed to qualify in the last two occasions at the Song Contest with Sevak Khanagyan and Srbuk, with both artists scoring their country’s worst results in the Contest in their respective years. Germany finished in fourth place in 2018 with Michael Schulte in Lisbon, and last with S!sters in Tel Aviv. Slovenian singer Ben Dolic was internally selected to represent Germany in 2020 with “Violent Thing”.