Moldova
TVR - Another Act of Moldovan CensorshipPosted Oct 20 2007
The Communist Party's leader and president of Moldova, Vladimir Voronin, shut down TVR1, a Romanian-language TV station, at the end of September, reported The Tiraspol Times. TVR1 representatives call the shut down illegal as they have a legal broadcast license that expires in 2011.
TVR1 officials appealed to the Moldova Audi-Video Coordination Council and cited the legal license and its up-to-date financial obligations as evidence that the shut down is both illegal and arbitrary. A Moldovan minority official, Vlad Turcanu, also sees the action as illegal and defended the station in the legislature.
This current action is reflective of an ongoing practice of growing censorship in what is considered the poorest country in Europe. Earlier this year, the government lowered TV Gaugauzia's signal to a point where few could receive the broadcast across the country. Also, one day before an election, an alternative news and information radio station critical of the current administration, Antenna-C, went off the air. The station has yet to return to the airwaves and Louis O'Neill, the head of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Mission to Moldova, has voiced his concern about this and other events.