On the night of April 1 at 00:00 the Crimean Tatar TV channels and radio stations within the ATR Media Holding ceased broadcasting, as ZN.UA reports.
The reason is that both channels ATR and Lale and radio stations Lider and Meydan didn’t manage to obtain Russian licences in Roskomnadzor (Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media) enabling to broadcast in the territory of Crimea.
Elzara Islyamova, ATR Holding’s Director General, informed that repeated requests of various international organizations, Muftiat and TV viewers didn’t reach their goal – the Crimean Tatar mass media didn’t manage to obtain authorization documents for their broadcasting. She also assured that the channel would go on searching for a legal solution of resuming its operation.
We shall recall that in late March social networks made public the Crimean Tatars’ letter addressed to Vladimir Putin, the President of the Russian Federation, in the TV channel’s support.
In his turn, Vyacheslav Kirilenko, the Minister of Culture of Ukraine, called for the channels’ support as well. He assumed that ATR would be able to continue broadcasting in the Ukrainian territory.
Federica Mogherini, the High Representative of the European diplomacy, also called for authorizing the Crimean Tatar channel to resume broadcasting, since the Crimean people, like everyone else, must enjoy the diversity of media broadcasting.
