RIGA, October 22. /TASS/. The Russian Embassy in Latvia bashed the decision of the National Electronic Mass Media Council (NEPLP) to revoke the broadcasting license of the First Baltic Channel.
"The hypocritical masks of 'pseudo-freedom of speech' have been ripped off, Latvia's National Electronic Mass Media Council has yet again shown its true colors by revoking, as of October 26, the First Baltic Channel’s license, the most popular TV channel among the country's Russian-speaking residents which, amid the COVID-19 pandemic that is raging in the country, prepared a series of programs on vaccination, responding to a recent appeal by Latvian authorities to raise the local population’s awareness on this extremely important and pressing issue, including in Russian, the native tongue of many in the Latvian Republic," the embassy’s statement on its Facebook page said.
Latvia’s First Baltic Channel TV was set up to air Russia’s Channel One in the Baltic states. On October 21, the NEPLP reported that it had revoked the channel’s broadcasting license. The regulator rationalized this decision by stating that "throughout the year, three significant violations of the law on electronic media outlets had been discovered in First Baltic Channel’s operations." The TV channel’s representative Vyacheslav Stepanenko told a TASS correspondent on Thursday that the television station had not yet received the NEPLP’s decision.
Last February, Latvia’s State Security Service reported that jointly with Estonia’s Security Police it had conducted several raids on the premises of the Baltijas mediju alianse company in Riga and its suburbs as well as in Tallinn. They were related to a possible violation of international sanctions, documents and data storage devices were seized as a result. Later, the media holding announced that starting in late March, First Baltic Channel would cease production and transmission of news programs and other original broadcasts in Latvia and Estonia, including the daily Latviyskoye Vremya newscast.
Since February 1, Latvia’s Tet telecommunications company stopped broadcasting Russian TV channels First Baltic Channel, NTV-World, Ren TV Baltiya, Kinokomediya and Kinomiks. This decision was caused by apprehensions over a possible violation of sanctions. The company pointed out that these TV channels in Latvia were distributed by TEM LV, one of the companies of the Baltijas mediju alianse media holding which earlier was charged with violating international sanctions.