A Georgian TV channel has lost a lawsuit in a Paris court in the case against the satellite operator Eutelsat, accused of illegally shutting down its programs, the official spokeswoman of Eutelsat, Vanessa O’Connor said, RIA Novosti reports.
The Georgian channel ‘Georgian Public Broadcasting (GPB)' demanded Eutelsat pay a penalty for illegally stopping broadcasting the programs of the ‘First Caucasian’ channel. It insisted that Russia, which is also renting the satellite, had exerted pressure to shut down the channel.
The channel ‘First Caucasian’ started internet broadcasting on January 5th. On January 15th they started using the satellite. The Georgian side wants to show facts that have been left offscreen on Russian channels. The programs are hosted by the director of the Center of Extreme Journalism Oleg Panfilov and Alla Dudayeva, widow of Johar Dudayev, leader of the Chechen separatists, who headed the military actions against federal forces in the 1990s.
Eutelsat stopped broadcasting the channel’s program using W7 on January 23rd. The frequency GPB had applied for was given to a Norwegian broadcaster, because they only had an agreement for test broadcasting. Eutelsat offered Georgia to broadcast using the W2A satellite, which covers Georgia and West Russia. The Georgian side insists that they were broadcasting based on an agreement and the technical characteristics of W2A are not suitable for it.
