Crimea’s independent Tatar-language television station ATR went off the air Wednesday after Russian authorities refused to give it a broadcasting license.
Following Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine last year, ATR, like other local media outlets, had to reregister by March 31 of this year to continue operating in Crimea. Only one Tatar-language media outlet, the newspaper Yeni Dunya, was able to register.
ATR served Crimean Tatars who number some 300,000 of the Black Sea peninsula’s roughly 2 million people. In 1944, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin deported the entire Crimean Tatar population. They began returning to Crimea in large numbers following …read more
Source: Voice of America
