Russia Shuts Down TV Station Serving Crimean Tatars

[NuclearDem]

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/04/02/world/europe/russia-shuts-down-tv-station-serving-crimean-tatars.html?referrer=

MOSCOW — Russia pulled the plug on the last independent television station serving Crimean Tatars on Wednesday, continuing what members of the Tatar minority called a pattern of discrimination because of their opposition to Russia’s annexation of the Black Sea peninsula.

The station, ATR, had been broadcasting under a Ukrainian license that expired on Tuesday. Its four applications for a new, Russian license were rejected by Roskomnadzor, Moscow’s media regulator, according to the channel’s managers.

“We will do everything to obtain all necessary documents to resume the broadcast,” Elzara Islyamova, the station’s general director, said at a news conference in Crimea that was posted on YouTube. The main point is to try to preserve a channel run by Tatars, for Tatars, she said.

...

One Tatar leader, Nariman Dzhelalov, wrote on Facebook that representatives of the Crimean prosecutor’s office had visited him at home on Monday to read aloud a warning not to participate in any demonstrations about the television station’s closing.