VILNIUS, April 30 (RIA Novosti) – A recent decision by Latvia to ban a Russian TV channel from its airwaves was a misstep and cannot be enforced in practice, the chairman of a leading Latvian telecommunications company said Wednesday.
Juris Gulbis, the chair of the board of Lattelecom, said in an interview with the Delfi news portal that Latvia’s decision to ban the Russian state Rossiya RTR TV channel from its airwaves was both wrong and ineffective.
According to Gulbis, the ban only applies to cable operators who work legally, while about 25 percent of the households in Latvia use illegal cards to receive Russian satellite signals.
“Everybody knows about such services and people use them,” Gulbs said. “Only the National Electronic Mass Media Council puts on airs that it cannot see it, just as it pretends there are not dozens of portals broadcasting banned TV channels. The council also pretends it cannot see all the yutube.com options,” Gulbis said.
Broadcasting of the Rossiya RTR TV channel was suspended for three months in Latvia last week by the National Electronic Mass Media Council of Latvia. The members of the Council said the channel was not objective in its coverage of events in Ukraine.
Konstantin Dolgov, the Russian Foreign Ministry envoy for human rights, called the Latvian decision "the latest attempt to censor inconvenient information and a violation of fundamental rights on access to mass media."
Latvia’s National Electronic Media Council has also opened a case against the Russian-language First Baltic Channel, which rebroadcasts the programs of Russia’s First TV Channel.
The Baltic Media Alliance holding said it was not surprising that the TV programs reported the official position of Russian authorities, “which is significantly different from the official position in the Baltics media,” adding that the freedom of speech guarantees all political positions can be voiced and heard.
