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Russian TV Chief Blames West For Station Shutdown
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| Kiselyov blames the West for TV6 shutdown |
MOSCOW, Jan. 23 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – Russia’s abrupt shutdown of its only nationwide independent television station sparked international concern, as the head of plugged off TV-6 accused the West Wednesday of tacitly supporting President, Vladimir Putin's crackdown on independent media.
"The West bears some of the responsibility for what has happened in Russia," Yevgeny Kiselyov, the former director of TV-6 told the Russian daily, Kommersant, Wednesday, January 23, 2002.
Kommersant itself is owned by the self-exiled tycoon, Boris Berezovsky, who also financed the opposition TV-6 until it was abruptly removed from the airwaves late Monday, January 21.
Kiselyov compared the West's role in curbing Russia's independent media to "the end of World War II, when the international community let Stalin carve up half of Europe", a reference to the post-war settlements that saw the emergence of the Communist Bloc, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
TV-6, which often attacked Putin's military campaign against independence activists in Chechnya, served as a refuge for many liberal journalists who fled the NTV channel after it was closed in similar circumstances last year.
Russian Press Minister, Mikhail Lesin, has invited broadcasters to tender for the TV-6 broadcast license, with a decision to be announced March 27.
The shutdown has also been condemned by the United States and senior media experts.
Alexei Samokhmalov, a top media expert with the 43-nation Council of Europe -- a pan-European human rights watchdog -- said Wednesday the closure of TV-6 was "illegal" and criticized the Russian authorities for intervening directly in the case.
"The liquidation of a company should be undertaken over a period of six months (following the court verdict) by its proprietors themselves, not by a government minister or the bailiffs," Samokhvalov told a news conference.
"The TV-6 saga is beginning to resemble a political vendetta against Berezovsky and Kiselyov and raises doubts about freedom of speech," said Andrei Rikhter, a Russian legal expert specializing in the media.
U.S. State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher, said on Tuesday the United States had made Russia well aware of its concern over the plight of the station. He stressed that media freedom was essential to Russia's economic and political development.
"For some time there's been a very strong appearance of political pressure in the judicial process against Russia's independent media, including in this case," he said
The fate of Russian media under Putin had often strained the Kremlin's relations with the West. But it became less of an issue after the start of the U.S.-led military campaign against Afghanistan in early October, for which Moscow has offered strong support.
In pulling the plug on TV-6, the authorities cited a now-defunct law allowing minority shareholders - in this case state-controlled oil giant LUKoil - to demand that a company be declared bankrupt should it not meet tangled requirements over assets and income.
Meanwhile, Putin has pledged his support for private television in the wake of the controversial closure of Russia's last independent broadcaster TV-6, prominent lawmaker, Boris Nemtsov, said after a meeting in the Kremlin late Tuesday.
"The state has monopolized radio and television broadcasting," Nemtsov told the media, adding that his faction had offered Putin backing for a law that would bar anyone, including the state, from owning more than 25 percent of a TV company.
"The president's reaction was clear and unequivocal; he said he supported such an approach and he liked it," Nemtsov said.
Putin also called for TV-6's successor company to "stay private and independent," both from the state and the self-exiled tycoon, Boris Berezovsky, who had owned TV-6.
Berezovsky, formerly a Kremlin insider and a powerful businessman, is now facing a prison sentence should he return to Russia, and has turned into a sworn enemy of the Kremlin.
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