BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

21/05/2008

Belarus: satellite TV operator drops three Russian stations after Lukashenko documentary

At the behest of the Minsk city authorities, satellite television operator Kosmos TV stopped carrying three Russian TV station on 16 May after two of them broadcast a documentary about President Alexandre Lukashenko. In a 15 May letter, Minsk Executive Committee vice-president Mikhail Tsistyankov notified the operator that permission to broadcast 24Doc, Feniks Art and NST was being withdrawn.

Since then, a message on the Kosmos TV website has informed its 100,000 subscribers that the three stations are no longer available for "reasons that have nothing to do with the company." Both Kosmos TV and city officials refuse to talk about the case. But, according to unconfirmed reports, the ban was prompted by a documentary about President Lukashenko on 24Doc and NST which was made by Yuri Kashchevatski in 1996 and is called "An ordinary president."

In an interview for the Belapan news agency, Kashchevatski said it was not the first time this had happened and that 24Doc had already been sanctioned in such a manner in Bobruysk (135 km southeast of Minsk) after one of his films was broadcast.

Kosmos TV stopped carrying another Russian TV station, RTVi, three days before the March 2006 presidential elections. RTVi had been broadcasting a programme about the elections called "Window on Europe" that was produced under a European Union project designed to improve access to independent news and information in Belarus.

Source:

http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=27075

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