Jose Manuel Pintu Teisheira visits beleaguered television channels

The TV channel ATN, one of the three TV channels in Kharkiv taken off air, reports that the Head of the European Commission in Ukraine, Jose Manuel Pintu Teisheira visited the channel on Monday.  He spoke with the journalists and promised to send official letters to members of the Ukrainian authorities asking that the channels be reinstated as soon as possible.

The report goes on to say that while the three channels, known for their critical reports about the local and central authorities, have been trying to return to air for almost a month, there remains deathly silence on the subject from other channels in the region.  This is despite the fact that there are ongoing protests over the removal of the channels from air, there have been messages of concern from Stop Censorship, the OSCE Media Representative, Reporters without Borders, the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union, the Kharkiv Human Rights Group and many others. As Yury Lukanov wrote in his analysis of the situation, while there is no direct proof of the channels’ allegations that Mayor Kernes is behind the events, there is a lot of indirect evidence.  The silence from colleagues on other channels surely also speaks volumes.

Information about the visit on Monday from http://atn.kharkov.ua/newsread.php?id=66852