Ukraine asks Google not to block the content of the Crimean Tatar TV channel
The Ukrainian National Council of Television and Radio Broadcasting appealed to Google Corporation with a request to stop blocking of broadcasting on YouTube of materials of the Crimean Tatar TV channel ATR, reports the press service of the National Council.
Earlier, YouTube asked to remove some programs of the channel after the complaint of the Russin media watchdog, Roskomnadzor, which claims that the posted materials violate Russian legislation on the information.
"The National Council in its letter to the Google Corporation emphasizes that the broadcasting of Ukrainian media is under the jurisdiction of Ukraine, and the only regulatory organization that has the right to contact third parties regarding the content posted by them is the Ukrainian National Council of Television and Radio Broadcasting," says the report.
The regulator assured the American company that the content of the Atlant-SV TV company complies with the requirements of Ukrainian and European law, and there are no legal grounds for blocking the content of the channel. Such a precedent may be dangerous for the freedom of speech both in Ukraine and in the world.
The National Council recalled that Roskomnadzor had previously tried to influence the content of Ukrainian TV channels posted on YouTube. In particular, it has demanded to remove the program about the recollections of the Ukrainian volunteer who fought in the East of the country, and the story about the political prisoner Emir-Usein Kuku, who was involved in the so-called Yalta case of Hizb ut-Tahrir.
"The National Council is convinced that by such actions the Russian Federation uses Google Corporation and its subsidiary company YouTube in their interests to conduct a hybrid war against Ukraine," says the Ukrainian regulator's website.
Since the beginning of 2019, there have been 30 recorded cases of use of force to journalists in Ukraine. This was reported by the monitoring data of "Index of physical safety of journalists," which the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine conducts together with partnering public organizations.