Russian Embassy In Latvia Slams 'Blatant' Ban On RT Channels

MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 03rd July, 2020) The Russian embassy in Riga on Friday criticized the ban on several RT channels in Latvia as a blatant violation of the freedom of speech.

The Latvian National Electronic Media Council said on Tuesday that it was banning seven RT channels, namely RT, RT HD, RT Arabic, RT Spanish, RT Documentary HD, RT Documentary and RT tv, saying that they were headed by Rossiya Segodnya Director-General Dmitry Kiselev, who is under EU sanctions. Notably, RT and Rossiya Segodnya are two different legal entities and the former is not chaired by Kiselev. Margarita Simonyan, RT's editor-in-chief, is not under any EU sanctions.

"We are curious, whom this blatant ban aims to defend? Arab and Spanish-speaking population of the country? This sounds absurd, doesn't it? It seems that freedom of speech in Latvia is becoming a category of exclusively hypothetical nature," the embassy wrote on Facebook.

The embassy added that this was not the first time that the Latvian authorities had targeted Russian television broadcasters, trying to isolate their citizens from the "harmful propaganda of Moscow," but essentially blocking access to objective and unbiased covering of world events.

On Thursday, the Russian Foreign Ministry slammed the ban and called on relevant international organizations to check Riga's decision to see if it complied with the political and legal commitments of Latvia on ensuring the freedom of speech and free access to information.

Russian media in the Baltic states have been frequently targeted by authorities in what Moscow says is a coordinated crackdown on the media, which is not in line with the principle of freedom of expression.